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My Air-ships 




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My Air-ships 



By 

A. Santos-Dumont 



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New York 

The Century Co. 

1904 



CONGRESS 
Twc Copies *AHf.»*!Vrtd 

MAR 12 1904 

CLASS a. xxc. Mo, 

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COPY S 






Copyright, 1003. 1004. by 
The Century Co. 



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THE DEVINNE PRESS 



CONTEXTS 

CHAPTER \ PAGE 

Introductory Fable 3 

1 The Coffee Plantation 17 

11 Paris ; Professional Balloonists, Automo- 
biles 34 

in My First Balloon Ascent 42 

iv My " Brazil," Smallest of Spherical Bal- 
loons 52 

v The Real and the Imaginary Dangers of 

Ballooning 62 

vi I Yield to the Steerable-balloon Idea . 73 

vii My First Air-ship Cruises (1898) ... 87 

viii How it Feels to Navigate the Air . . 98 

ix Explosive Engines and Inflammable Gases i i 1 

x I go in for Air-ship Building . . . .124 

xi The Exposition Summer 140 

xii The Deutsch Prize and its Problems . 156 

xiii A Fall Before a Rise 169 

xiv The Building of My "No. 6" . . . . 190 

xv Winning the Deutsch Prize 202 



vi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

xvi A Glance Backward and Forward. . .218 

xvii Monaco and the Maritime Guide-rope . 233 

xviii Fights in Mediterranean Winds . . . 248 

xix Speed 265 

xx An Accident and its Lessons .... 284 
xxi The First of the World's Air-ship Sta- 
tions 294 

xxii My " No. 9," the Little Runabout . .310 

xxiii The Air-ship in War 332 

xxiv Paris as a Center of Air-Ship Experi- 
ments 346 

Concluding Fable 354 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



/ 



PAGE 



Santos-Dumont Frontispiece 

Headquarters of Coffee Plantation 5 

Private Railway in Coffee Plantation 16 

The Locomobile 21 

Henrique Santos-Dumont 26 

" Man Flies." Winning the Deutsch Prize 31 

"The Brazil "—Smallest of Spherical Balloons . . . . 57 

Motor of " No. 1 " 82 

First Ascension of " No. 1 "—Sept. 18, 1898 .... 91 

Accident to " No. 1 "—Doubling up 95 

" No. 6 " illustrates also free Diagonal Movement . . .105 

Retour de Flamme at Puteaux 121 

First Start in " No. 2 " (Rain) 126 

"No. 2" Doubling up — Culmination, May n ? 1899 . .131, 

"No 3" 136 

Motor of " No. 4 " 142/ 

Professor Langley visits " No. 4 " 147 

"No. 4" 158 

"No. 5 " over Longchamps Race-course 163 

" No. 5 " landing at Trocadero for Repairs 167 

Accident in Park of M. Edmond Rothschild . . . .171 

vii 



viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



"No. 5 "—August 4, 1901 . 176 

" No. 5 " over Bois de Boulogne 179 

Accident at the Trocadero Hotels just before the Rescue 

by the Firemen 183 

"No. 5 " leaving Aero Club Grounds . . . . . .188 

" No. 6 "—Return from the Eiffel Tower 192 

" No. 6 "—First trip 195 

" No. 6 " issuing from Balloon-shed 200 

Scientific Commission of Aero Club observing winning of 

Deutsch Prize 203 

The Start— Deutsch Prize 208 

Deutsch Prize won 211 

Medal awarded by the Brazilian Government . . . .215 

" No. 6 " winning the Deutsch Prize 220 

" No. 6 "—an Accident 223 

" No. 6 " at the Aero Club, Saint Cloud 228 

The Balloon-house of the Condamine 232 

Interior of Balloon-shed, Monte Carlo 237 

Being lifted over Sea-wall 244 

From Cap Martin to Monte Carlo 249 

"Wind A" .255 

"WindB" 255 

Motor of " No. 6 " 262 

" No. 9 "—Aeronaut leaves Basket ^ 267 

" No. 6 " — Aeronaut going back to Basket 267 

"No. 6"— Phase of an Accident 274 

"No. 6" returning from the Eiffel Tower 278 



f 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix 

PAGE 

Accident, February 14, 1902 288, 289 

"No. 9 " leaving Aero Club Park at Saint Cloud . . . 299 

" No. 7 " 304 

" The Omnibus " 307 

"No. 9 "—the Runabout 312 

"No. 9 "—the Runabout 3*7 

Guide-roping lower than the House-tops 322 

"No. 9" over the Bois 325 

Guide-roping on a Level with the Tops of the Houses . 330 
" No. 9 " at the Grand Military Review at Longchamps . 339 



MY AIR-SHIPS 



MY AIR-SHIPS 

INTRODUCTORY FABLE 

THE REASONING OF CHILDREN 

TWO young Brazilian boys strolled in the 
shade conversing. They were simple 
youths of the interior, knowing only the plenty 
of the primitive plantation, where, undisturbed 
by labor-saving devices, Nature yielded man 
her fruits at the price of the sweat of his brow. 

They were ignorant of machines to the ex- 
tent that they had never seen a wagon or a 
wheelbarrow. Horses and oxen bore the bur- 
dens of plantation life on their backs, and 
placid Indian laborers wielded the spade and 
the hoe. 

Yet they were thoughtful boys. At this 
moment they discussed things beyond all that 
they had seen or heard. 



4 MY AIR-SHIPS 

" Why not devise a better means of trans- 
port than the backs of horses and of oxen ? " 
Luis argued. " Last summer I hitched horses 
to a barn-door, loaded it with sacks of maize, 
and hauled in one load what ten horses could 
not have brought on their backs. True, it re- 
quired seven horses to drag it, while five men 
had to sit around its edges and hold the load 
from falling off." 

'What would you have?" answered Pe- 
dro. " Nature demands compensations. You 
cannot get something from nothing or more 
from less ! " 

" If we could put rollers under the drag, 
less pulling-power would be needed." 

" Bah ! the force saved would be used up in 
the labor of shifting the rollers." 

" The rollers might be attached to the drag 
at fixed points by means of holes running 
through their centers," mused Luis. " Or 
why should not circular blocks of wood be 
fixed at the four corners of the drag? . . . 
Pedro! look down the road, what is coming? 
The very thing I imagined, only better ! One 
horse is pulling it at a good trot ! " 



THE REASONING OF CHILDREN 7 

The first wagon to appear in that region 
of the interior stopped, and its driver spoke 
with the boys. 

" Those round things?" he answered to 
their questions; " they are called wheels." 

Pedro accepted his explanation of the prin- 
ciple slowly. 

" There must be some hidden defect in the 
device/' he insisted. " Look around us. No- 
where does Nature employ the device you call 
the wheel. Observe the mechanism of the hu- 
man body. Observe the horse's frame. Ob- 
serve . . . " 

" Observe that horse and man and wagon 
with its wheels are speeding from us," replied 
Luis, laughing. " Cannot you yield to accom- 
plished facts ? You tire me with your appeals 
to Nature. Has man ever accomplished any- 
thing worth having except by combating Na- 
ture? We do violence to her when we chop 
down a tree ! I would go further than this in- 
vention of the wagon. Conceive a more pow- 
erful motive force than that horse ..." 

" Attach two horses to the w r agon." 

" I mean a machine," said Luis. 



8 MY AIR-SHIPS 

" A mechanical horse with powerful iron 
legs ! " suggested Pedro. 

" No ; I would have a motor wagon. If I 
could find an artificial force, I would cause it 
to act on a point in the circumference of each 
wheel. Then the wagon could carry its own 
puller!" 

" You might as well attempt to lift yourself 
from the ground by pulling at your boot- 
straps ! " laughed Pedro. " Listen, Luis. 
Man is subject to certain natural laws. The 
horse, it is true, carries more than his own 
weight, but by a device of Nature's own— his 
legs. Had you the artificial force you dream 
of, you would have to apply it naturally. I 
have it ! It would have to be applied to poles 
to push your wagon from behind ! " 

"I hold to applying the force to the wheels/' 
insisted Luis. 

" By the nature of things you would lose 
power/' said Pedro. " A wheel is harder to 
force on from a point inside its circumference 
than when the motive power is applied to that 
circumference directly, as by pushing or pull- 
ing the wagon/' 






THE REASONING OF CHILDREN 9 

" To relieve friction I would run my power- 
wagon on smooth iron rails. Then the loss 
in power would be gained in speed/' 

" Smooth iron rails ! " laughed Pedro. 
" Why, the wheels would slip on them ! You 
would have to put notches all round their cir- 
cumference and corresponding notches in the 
rails. And what would prevent the power- 
wagon slipping off the rails even then ? " 

The boys had been walking briskly. Now 
a shieking noise startled them. Before them 
stretched in long lines a railway in course of 
construction; and from among the hills came 
toward them, at what seemed immense speed, 
a construction train. 

" It is an avalanche! " cried Pedro. 

" It is the very thing that I was dreaming 
of ! " said Luis. 

The train stopped. A gang of laborers 
emerged from it and began working on the 
road-bed, while the locomotive engineer an- 
swered the boys' questions and explained the 
mechanism of his engine. The boys discussed 
this later wonder as they wended their way 
homeward. 



io MY AIR-SHIPS 

" Could it be adapted to the river, men 
might become lords of the water as of the 
land/' said Luis. " It would be necessary only 
to devise wheels capable of taking hold of the 
water. Fix them to a great frame, like that 
wagon-body, and the steam-engine could pro- 
pel it along the surface of the river ! " 

u Now you talk folly!" exclaimed Pedro. 
" Does a fish float on the surface? In the wa- 
ter we must travel as the fish does— in it, not 
over it! Your wagon-body, being filled with 
light air, would upset at your first movement. 
And your wheels — do you imagine they would 
take hold of so liquid a thing as water? " 

" What would you suggest? " 

" I would suggest that your water-wagon 
be jointed in half a dozen places, so that it 
could be made to squirm through the water 
like a fish. Listen ! A fish navigates the wa- 
ter. You desire to navigate the water. Then 
study the fish! There are fish that use pro- 
peller fins and flippers, too. So you might de- 
vise broad boards to strike the water as our 
hands and feet strike it in swimming. But do 
not talk about wagon- wheels in the water ! " 



THE REASONING OF CHILDREN n 

They were now beside the broad river. The 
first steamer to navigate it was seen approach- 
ing from a distance. The boys could not yet 
well distinguish it. 

" It is evidently a whale/' said Pedro. 
" What navigates the water? Fish. What is 
the fish that sometimes is seen swimming with 
its body half-way above the surface? The 
whale. See, it is spouting water ! " 

" That is not water, but steam or smoke/' 
said Luis. 

' Then it is a dead whale; and the steam is 
the vapor of putrefaction. That is why it 
stays so high in the water— a dead whale rises 
high, on its back." 

" No," said Luis. " It is really a steam 
water-wagon." 

" With smoke coming from fire in it, as 
from the locomotive ? " 

" Yes." 

" But the fire would burn it up. . . ." 

" The body is doubtless iron, like the loco- 
motive." 

" Iron would sink. Throw your hatchet in 
the river and see." 



i2 MY AIR-SHIPS 

The steamboat came to shore, close to the 
boys. Running to it, to their joy they per- 
ceived on its deck an old friend of their fam- 
ily, a neighboring planter. 

" Come, boys! " he said; " and I will show 
you round this steamboat." 

After a long inspection of the machinery, 
the two boys sat with their old friend on the 
fore-deck, in the shade of an awning. 

" Pedro," said Luis, " will not men some 
day invent a ship to sail in the sky? " 

The common-sense old planter glanced with 
apprehension at the youth's face, flushed with 
ardor. 

" Have you been much in the sun, Luis ? " 
he asked. 

" Oh, he is always talking in that flighty 
way," Pedro reassured him. " He takes plea- 
sure in it." 

" No, my boy," said the planter. " Man 
will never navigate a ship in the sky." 

" But on St. John's Eve, when we all make 
bonfires, we also send up little tissue-paper 
spheres with hot air in them," insisted Luis. 
" If we could construct a very great one, big 



THE REASONING OF CHILDREN 13 

enough to lift a man, a light car, and a motor, 
might not the whole system be propelled 
through the air as a steamboat is propelled 
through the water ? " 

" Boys, never talk foolishness ! " exclaimed 
the old friend of the family, hurriedly, as the 
captain of the boat approached. It was too 
late. The captain had heard the boy's obser- 
vation; instead of calling it folly, he excused 
him. 

" The great balloon which you imagine has 
existed since 1783/' he said. " But, though 
capable of carrying a man or several men, it 
cannot be controlled. It is at the mercy of the 
slightest breeze. As long ago as 1852, a 
French engineer named Giffard made a bril- 
liant failure with what he called a ' dirigible 
balloon/ furnished with the motor and pro- 
peller Luis has dreamed of. All he did was to 
demonstrate the impossibility of directing a 
balloon through the air." 

" The only way would be to build a flying- 
machine on the model of the bird/' spoke up 
Pedro, with authority. 

" Pedro is a very sensible boy/' observed 



i 4 MY AIR-SHIPS 

the old planter. " It is a pity Luis is not more 
like him and less visionary. Tell me, Pedro, 
how did you come to decide in favor of the 
bird as against the balloon? " 

" Easily/' replied Pedro, glibly. " It is the 
most ordinary common sense. Does man fly? 
No. Does the bird fly? Yes. Then, if man 
would fly, let him imitate the bird. Nature 
has made the bird; and Nature never goes 
wrong. Had the bird been furnished with a 
great air-bag, I might have suggested a bal- 
loon. . . ." 

" Exactly !" exclaimed both captain and 
planter. 

But Luis, sitting in his corner, muttered, 
unconvinced as Galileo: " It will move! ,J 







Private Railway in Coffee Plantation 



CHAPTER I 

THE COFFEE PLANTATION 

FROM the way in which the partizans of 
Nature have fallen upon me, I might 
well be the uninformed and visionary Luis of 
the fable ; for has it not been taken for granted 
that I began my experiments ignorant alike of 
mechanics and ballooning? And before my 
experiments succeeded were they not all called 
impossible ? 

Does not the final condemnation of the com- 
mon-sense Pedro continue to weigh upon me ? 
After steering my ship through the sky at 
will, I am still told that flying creatures are 
heavier than the air. A little more, and I 
should be made responsible for the tragic ac- 
cidents of others who had not my experience 
of mechanics and aeronautics. 
'On the whole, therefore, I think it best to 

17 



18 MY AIR-SHIPS 

begin at the coffee plantation where I was 
born in the year 1873. 

Inhabitants of Europe comically picture 
these Brazilian plantations to themselves as 
primitive stations of the boundless pampas, as 
innocent of the cart and the wheelbarrow as 
of the electric light and the telephone. There 
are such stations far in the interior. I have 
been through them on hunting trips; but 
they are not the coffee plantations of Sao 
Paulo. 

I can scarcely imagine a more suggestive 
environment for a boy dreaming over me- 
chanical inventions. At the age of seven I 
was permitted to drive our " locomobiles " of 
the epoch — steam traction-engines of the 
fields, with great broad wheels. At the age of 
twelve I had conquered my place in the cabs 
of the Baldwin locomotive engines, hauling 
train-loads of green coffee over the sixty miles 
of our plantation railway. When my father 
and brothers would take pleasure in making 
horseback trips far and near, to see if the trees 
were clean, if the crops were coming up, and if 
the rains had done damage, I preferred to slip 



THE COFFEE PLANTATION 19 

down to the works and play with the coffee- 
engines. 

I think it is not generally understood how 
scientifically a Brazilian coffee plantation may 
be operated. From the moment when a rail- 
way train has brought the green berries to the 
works to the moment when the finished and 
assorted product is loaded ' on the trans- 
atlantic ships, no human hand touches the 
coffee. 

You know that the berries of black coffee 
are red when they are green. Though it may 
complicate the statement, they look like cher- 
ries. Car-loads of them are unloaded at the 
central works and thrown into great tanks, 
where the water is continually renewed and 
agitated. Mud that has clung to the berries 
from the rains, and little stones which have 
got mixed with them in the loading of the 
cars, go to the bottom, while the berries and 
the little sticks and bits of leaves float on the 
surface and are carried from the tank by 
means of an inclined trough, whose bottom 
is pierced with innumerable little holes. 
Through these holes falls some of the water 



2o MY AIR-SHIPS 

with the berries, while the little sticks and 
pieces of leaves float on. 

The fallen coffee-berries are now clean. 
They are still the color and size of cherries. 
The red exterior is a hard pod, or polpa. In- 
side of each pod are two beans, each of which 
is covered with a skin of its own. The water 
which has fallen with the berries carries them 
on to the machine called the despolpador, 
which breaks the outside pod and frees the 
beans. Long tubes, called " driers/' now re- 
ceive the beans, still wet and with their skins 
still on them. In these driers the beans are 
continually agitated in hot air. 

Coffee is very delicate. It must be handled 
carefully. Therefore the dried beans are 
lifted by the cups of an endless-chain elevator 
to a height whence they slide down an in- 
clined trough to another building because of 
the danger of fire. This is the coffee-ma- 
chine house. 

The first machine is a ventilator in which 
sieves shaken back and forth are so combined 
that only the coffee-beans can pass through 
them. No coffee is lost in them, and no dirt is 



o 




THE COFFEE PLANTATION 23 

kept by them ; for one little stone or stick that 
may still have been carried with the beans 
would be enough to break the next machine. 

Another endless-chain elevator carries the 
beans to a height whence they fall through 
an inclined trough into the descascador, or 
" skinner." It is a highly delicate machine ; 
if the spaces between are a trifle too big, the 
coffee passes without being skinned, while if 
they are too small, they break the beans. 

Another elevator carries the skinned beans 
with their skins to another ventilator, in which 
the skins are blown away. 

Still another elevator takes the now clean 
beans up and throws them into the " sepa- 
rator/' a great copper tube two yards in di- 
ameter and about seven yards long, resting at 
a slight incline. Through the separator tube 
the coffee slides. As it is pierced at first with 
little holes, the smaller beans fall through 
them. Further along it is pierced with larger 
holes, and through these the medium-sized 
beans fall; and further still along are yet 
larger holes for the large, round beans called 

" mocha." 
2 



24 MY AIR-SHIPS 

The machine is called a separator because it 
separates the beans into their conventional 
grades by size. Each grade falls into its hop- 
per, beneath which are stationed weighing- 
scales and men with coffee-sacks. As the 
sacks fill up to the required weight, they are 
replaced by empty ones; and the tied and la- 
beled sacks are shipped to Europe. 

As a boy, I played with this machinery and 
the driving engines that furnished its motive 
force ; and before long familiarity had taught 
me how to repair any part of it. As I have 
said, it is delicate machinery. In particular, 
the moving sieves were continually getting 
out of order. While they were not heavy, they 
moved back and forth horizontally at great 
speed and took an enormous amount of motive 
power. The belts were always being changed, 
and I remember the fruitless efforts of all of us 
to remedy the mechanical defects of the device. 

Now, is it not curious that these trouble- 
some shifting sieves were the only machines 
at the coffee- works that were not rotary? 
They were not rotary, and they were bad. I 
think this put me, as a boy, against all agitat- 




Henrique Santos-Dumont 






THE COFFEE PLANTATION 27 

ing devices in mechanics, and in favor of the 
more easily handled and more serviceable ro- 
tary movement. 

It may be that half a century from now man 
will assume mastery of the air by means of 
flying-machines heavier than the medium in 
which they move. I look forward to the time 
with hope; and at the present moment I have 
gone further to meet it than any other, because 
my own air-ships (which have been so re- 
proached on this head) are slightly heavier 
than the air. But I am prejudiced enough to 
think that, when the time comes, the conquer- 
ing device will not be flapping wings or any 
other substitute of an agitating nature. 

I cannot say at what age I made my first 
kites, but I remember how my comrades used 
to tease me at our game of " Pigeon flies ! " 
All the children gather round a table and the 
leader calls out: " Pigeon flies! Hen flies! 
Crow flies ! Bee flies ! " and so on ; and at each 
call we were supposed to raise our fingers. 
Sometimes, however, he would call out : " Dog 
flies ! Fox flies ! " or some other like impossi- 
bility, to catch us. If any one raised a finger, 



28 MY AIR-SHIPS 

he was made to pay a forfeit. Now my play- 
mates never failed to wink and smile mock- 
ingly at me when one of them called : " Man 
flies! " for at the word I would always lift my 
finger very high, as a sign of absolute convic- 
tion ; and I refused with energy to pay the for- 
feit. The more they laughed at me, the hap- 
pier I was, hoping that some day the laugh 
would be on my side. 

Among the thousands of letters which I re- 
ceived after winning the Deutsch Prize, there 
was one that gave me particular pleasure. I 
quote from it as a matter of curiosity: 

" . . . Do you remember the time, my dear 
Alberto, when we played together ' Pigeon 
flies ! ? ? It came back to me suddenly the day 
when the news of your success reached Rio. 

" ' Man flies ! ' old fellow ! You were right 
to raise your finger, and you have just proved 
it by flying round the Eiffel Tower. 

" You were right not to pay the forfeit ; it 
is M. Deutsch who has paid it in your stead. 
Bravo! you well deserve the 100,000-franc 
prize. 



THE COFFEE PLANTATION 29 

" They play the old game now more than 
ever at home ; but the name has been changed 
and the rules modified since October 19, 1901. 
They call it now * Man flies ! ' and he who does 
not raise his finger at the word pays his for- 
feit. " Your friend, 

" Pedro." 

This letter brings back to me the happiest 
days of my life, when I amused myself, while 
waiting for something better, in making light 
aeroplanes with bits of straw, moved by screw 
propellers driven by springs of twisted rubber, 
or ephemeral silk-paper balloons. Each year, 
on June 23, over the St. John bonfires which 
are customary in Brazil from long tradition, 
I inflated whole fleets of these little Montgol- 
fiers and watched in ecstasy their ascension to 
the skies. 

In those days, I confess, my favorite author 
was Jules Verne. The wholesome imagina- 
tion of this truly great writer, working magi- 
cally with the immutable laws of matter, fas- 
cinated me from childhood. In its daring 
conceptions I saw, never doubting, the me- 



3 o MY. AIR-SHIPS 

chanics and the science of the coming ages, 
when man should, by his unaided genius, rise 
to the height of a demigod. 

With Captain Nemo and his shipwrecked 
guests I explored the depths of the sea in that 
first of all submarines, the Nautilus. With 
Phineas Fogg I went round the world in 
eighty days. In " Screw Island " and " The 
Steam House " my boyish faith leaped out to 
welcome the ultimate triumphs of an automo- 
bilism that, in those days, had not as yet a 
name. With Hector Servadoc I navigated the 
air! 

I saw my first balloon in 1888, when I was 
about fifteen years old. There was a fair or 
celebration of some sort at the town of Sao 
Paulo; and a professional made the ascent, 
letting himself down afterward in a para- 
chute. By this time I was perfectly familiar 
with the history of Montgolfier and the bal- 
loon craze which, following on his courageous 
and brilliant experiments, so significantly 
marked the last years of the eighteenth and 
the first years of the nineteenth century. In 
my heart I had the deepest admiration for 
those four men of genius— Montgolfier and 




" Man Flies." Winning the Deutsch Prize 



THE COFFEE PLANTATION 33 

the physicists Charles and Pilatre de Rozier, 
and the engineer Henry Giffard — who have 
attached their names forever to great steps 
forward in aerial navigation. 

I, too, desired to go ballooning. In the 
long, sun-bathed Brazilian afternoons, when 
the hum of insects, punctuated by the far-off 
cry of some bird, lulled me, I would lie in the 
shade of the veranda and gaze into the fair 
sky of Brazil, where the birds fly so high and 
soar with such ease on their great out- 
stretched wings, where the clouds mount so 
gaily in the pure light of day, and you have 
only to raise your eyes to fall in love with 
space and freedom. So, musing on the explo- 
ration of the aerial ocean, I, too, devised air- 
ships and flying-machines in my imagination. 

These imaginings I kept to myself. In 
those days, in Brazil, to talk of inventing a 
flying-machine, or dirigible balloon, would 
have been to stamp one's self as unbalanced 
and visionary. Spherical balloonists were 
looked on as daring professionals not differ- 
ing greatly from acrobats ; and for the son of 
a planter to dream of emulating them would 
have been almost a social sin. 



CHAPTER II 

PARIS; PROFESSIONAL BALLOONISTS, 
AUTOMOBILES 

IN 1 89 1 it was decided that our family 
should make a trip to Paris, and I re- 
joiced doubly at the prospect. All good Amer- 
icans are said to go to Paris when they die. 
But to me, with the bias of my reading, France 
— the land of my father's ancestors and of his 
own education as an engineer at the Ecole 
Centr ale— represented everything that is 
powerful and progressive. 

In France the first hydrogen balloon had 
been let loose and the first air-ship had been 
made to navigate the air with its steam- 
engine, screw propeller, and rudder. Natu- 
rally, I figured to myself that the problem had 
made marked progress since Henry Giffard 
in 1852, with a courage equal to his science, 

34 



PROFESSIONAL BALLOONISTS 35 

gave his masterly demonstration of the prob- 
lem of directing balloons. 

I said to myself, " I am going to Paris to see 
the new things — steer able balloons and auto- 
mobiles ! " 

On one of my first free afternoons, there- 
fore, I slipped away from the family on a tour 
of exploration. To my immense astonish- 
ment, I learned that there were no steerable 
balloons — that there were only spherical bal- 
loons, like that of Charles in 1783 ! In fact, no 
one had continued the trials of an elongated 
balloon driven by a thermic motor, begun by 
Henry Giffard. The trials of such balloons 
with an electric motor, undertaken by the 
Tissandier brothers in 1883, had been re- 
peated by two constructors in the following 
year, but had been finally given up in 1885. 
For years no " cigar-shaped " balloon had 
been seen in the air. 

This threw me back on spherical ballooning. 
Consulting the Paris city directory, I noted 
the address of a professional aeronaut. To 
him I explained my desires. 

" You want to make an ascent? " he asked 



36 MY AIR-SHIPS 

gravely. " Hum, hum ! Are you sure you 
have the courage? A balloon ascent is no 
small thing, and you seem too young." 

I assured him both of my purpose and my 
courage. Finally he yielded to my arguments, 
and consented to take me " for a short as- 
cent/' It must be on a calm, sunny afternoon, 
and not last more than two hours. 

" My honorarium will be twelve hundred 
francs (two hundred and forty dollars)/' he 
added; " and you must sign me a contract to 
hold yourself responsible for all damage we 
may do to your own life and limbs, and to 
mine, to the property of third parties, and to 
the balloon itself and its accessories. Further- 
more, you agree to pay our railway fares and 
transportation for the balloon and its basket 
back to Paris from the point at which we 
come to the ground/' 

I asked time for reflection. To a youth 
eighteen years of age, twelve hundred francs 
was a large sum. How could I justify the 
spending of it to my parents? Then I 
reflected : 

" If I risk twelve hundred francs for an 



PROFESSIONAL BALLOONISTS 37 

afternoon's pleasure, I shall find it either good 
or bad. If it is bad, the money will be lost. 
If it is good, I shall want to repeat it and I 
shall not have the means." 

This decided me. Regretfully, I gave up 
ballooning and took refuge in automobiling. 

Automobiles were still rare in Paris in 
1 89 1 ; and I had to go to the works at Valen- 
tigny to buy my first machine, a Peugeot 
3 */2 horse-power roadster. 

It was a curiosity. In those days there were 
no automobile licenses, no " chauffeurs' " ex- 
aminations. We drove our new inventions 
through the streets of the capital at our own 
risks and perils. Such was the curiosity they 
aroused that I was not allowed to stop in pub- 
lic places like the Place de l'Opera for fear of 
attracting multitudes and obstructing traffic. 

Immediately I became an enthusiastic auto- 
mobilist. I took pleasure in understanding 
the parts and their proper interworking ; I 
learned to care for my machine and to repair 
it ; and when, at the end of some seven months, 
our whole family returned to Brazil, I took 
the Peugeot roadster with me. 



38 MY AIR-SHIPS 

Returning to Paris in 1892, with the bal- 
loon idea still obsessing me, I looked up a 
number of other professional aeronauts. Like 
the first, all wanted extravagant sums to take 
me up with them on the most trivial kind of 
ascent. All took the same attitude. They 
made a danger and a difficulty of ballooning, 
enlarging on its risks to life and property. 
Even in presence of the great prices they pro- 
posed to charge me, they did not encourage 
me to close with them. Obviously they were 
determined to keep ballooning to themselves 
as a professional mystery. Therefore, I 
bought a new automobile. 

I should add that this condition of things 
has changed wonderfully since the foundation 
of the Paris Aero Club. 

Automobile tricycles were just then com- 
ing to the fore. I chose one and rejoiced in 
its freedom from breakdowns. In my new 
enthusiasm for the type, I was the first to in- 
troduce motor-tricycle races in Paris. Rent- 
ing the bicycle-track of the Pare des Princes 
for an afternoon, I organized the race and 
offered the prizes. " Common-sense " people 



PROFESSIONAL BALLOONISTS 39 

declared that the event would end disas- 
trously ; they proved to their own satisfaction 
that the tricycles, going round the short 
curves of a bicycle-track, would overturn and 
wreck themselves. If they did not do this, the 
inclination would certainly cause the carbu- 
reter to stop or not to work so well; and the 
stoppage of the carbureter while going around 
a sharp curve would upset the tricycles. The 
director of the Velodrome, while accepting my 
money, refused to let me have the track for a 
Sunday afternoon, fearing a fiasco! They 
were disappointed when the race proved to be 
a great success. 

Returning again to Brazil, I regretted bit- 
terly that I had not persevered in my attempt 
to make a balloon ascent. At that distance, 
far from ballooning possibilities, even the high 
prices demanded by the aeronauts seemed to 
me of secondary importance. Finally, one day 
in 1897, in a Rio book-shop, when making my 
purchases of reading-matter for a new voyage 
to Paris, I came on a volume by MM. Lacham- 
bre and Machuron— " Andree: Au Pole Nord 
en Ballon/' 



4 o MY AIR-SHIPS 

The reading of this book during the long 
sea voyage proved a revelation to me, and I 
finished by studying it like a text-book. Its 
description of materials and prices opened my 
eyes. At last I saw clearly. Andree's im- 
mense balloon — a reproduction of whose pho- 
tograph on the book-cover showed how those 
who gave it the final varnishing climbed up 
its sides and over its summit like a mountain — 
cost only forty thousand francs (eight thou- 
sand dollars) to construct and equip fully! 

I determined that, on arriving in Paris, I 
would cease consulting professional aeronauts 
and would make the acquaintance of con- 
structors. 

I was particularly anxious to meet M. La- 
chambre, the builder of the Andree balloon, 
and M. Machuron, who was his associate and 
the writer of the book. In these men I will say 
frankly that I found all I had hoped for. 
When I asked M. Lachambre how much it 
would cost me to take a short trip in one of 
his balloons, his reply so astonished me that 
I asked him to repeat it. 

" For a long trip of three or four hours," 



PROFESSIONAL BALLOONISTS . 41 

he said, " it will cost you two hundred and fifty 
francs, all expenses and return of balloon by 
rail included." 

" And the damages ? " I asked. 

" We shall not do any damage ! " he replied, 
laughing. 

I closed with him on the spot; and M. Ma- 
churon agreed to take me up the next day. 



CHAPTER III 

MY FIRST BALLOON ASCENT 

I HAVE kept the clearest remembrance of 
the delightful sensations I experienced 
in this day, my first trial in the air. I arrived 
early at the Pare d' Aerostation of Vaugirard, 
so as to lose nothing of the preparations. 

The balloon, of a capacity of 26,500 cubic 
feet, was lying a flat mass on the grass. At 
a signal from M. Lachambre, the workmen 
turned on the gas ; and soon the formless thing 
rounded up into a great sphere and rose into 
the air. 

At 11 a.m. all was ready. The basket 
rocked prettily beneath the balloon, which a 
mild, fresh breeze was caressing. Impatient 
to be ofif, I stood in my corner of the narrow 
wicker basket, with a bag of ballast in my 
hand. In the other corner M. Machuron 
gave the word : " Let go, all ! " 

42 



, MY FIRST BALLOON ASCENT 4 3 

Suddenly the wind ceased. The air seemed 
motionless around us. We were off, going at 
the speed of the air-current in which we now 
lived and moved. Indeed, for us there was no 
more wind; and this is the first great fact of 
all spherical ballooning. Infinitely gentle is 
this unfelt movement forward and upward. 
The illusion is complete : it seems not to be the 
balloon that moves, but the earth that sinks 
down and away* 

At the bottom of the abyss which already 
opened almost a mile below us, the earth, in- 
stead of appearing round like a ball, shows 
concave like a bowl, by a peculiar phenomenon 
of refraction whose effect is to lift up con- 
stantly to the aeronaut's eyes the circle of the 
horizon. 

Villages and woods, meadows and cha- 
teaux, pass across the moving scene, out of 
which the whistling of locomotives throws 
sharp notes. These faint, piercing sounds, to- 
gether with the yelping and barking of dogs, 
are the only noises that reach one through 
the depths of the upper air. The human voice 
cannot mount up into these boundless soli- 



44 MY AIR-SHIPS 

tudes. Human beings look like ants along the 
white lines that are highways; and the rows 
of houses look like children's playthings. 

While my gaze was still held fascinated on 
the scene, a cloud passed before the sun. Its 
shadow cooled the gas in the balloon, which 
wrinkled and began descending, gently at first 
and then with accelerated speed, against 
which we strove by throwing out ballast. 
This is the second great fact of spherical bal- 
looning—we are masters of our altitude by 
the possession of a few kilos of sand ! 

Regaining our equilibrium above a plateau 
of clouds almost two miles high, we enjoyed a 
wonderful sight. The sun cast the shadow of 
the balloon on this screen of dazzling white- 
ness, while our own profiles, magnified to 
giant size, appeared in the center of a triple 
rainbow ! As we could no longer see the earth, 
all sensation of movement ceased. We might 
be going at storm speed and not know it. We 
could not even know the direction we were 
taking, save by descending below the clouds 
to regain our bearings! 

A joyous peal of bells mounted up to us. It 



MY FIRST BALLOON ASCENT 45 

was the noonday angelus, ringing from some 
village belfry. I had brought up with us a 
substantial lunch of hard-boiled eggs, cold 
roast beef and chicken, cheese, ice-cream, 
fruits and cakes, champagne, coffee and char- 
treuse. Nothing is more delicious than lunch- 
ing like this above the clouds in a spherical 
balloon. No dining-room can be so marvelous 
in its decoration. The sun sets the clouds in 
ebullition, making them throw up rainbow jets 
of frozen vapor like great sheaves of fire- 
works all around the table. Lovely white 
spangles of the most delicate ice formation 
scatter here and there by magic, while flakes 
of snow form moment by moment out of noth- 
ingness, beneath our very eyes, and in our 
very drinking-glasses ! 

I was finishing my little glass of liqueur 
when the curtain suddenly fell on this won- 
derful stage-setting of sunlight, cloud-billows, 
and azure. The barometer rose rapidly five 
millimeters, showing an abrupt rupture of 
equilibrium and a swift descent. Probably the 
balloon had become loaded down with several 
pounds of snow, and it was falling into a cloud. 



\6 MY AIR-SHIPS 

We passed into the half-darkness of the 
fog. We could still see our basket, our instru- 
ments, and the parts of the rigging nearest 
us ; but the netting that held us to the balloon 
was visible only to a certain height and the 
balloon itself had completely disappeared. 
So we had for a moment the strange and de- 
lightful sensation of hanging in the void with- 
out support — of having lost our last ounce of 
weight in a limbo of nothingness, vaporous, 
somber, and portentous! 

After a few minutes of fall, slackened by 
throwing out more ballast, we found ourselves 
under the clouds at a distance of about one 
fifth of a mile from the ground. A village fled 
away from us below. We took our bearings 
with the compass and compared our route- 
map with the immense natural map that un- 
folded below. Soon we could identify roads, 
railways, villages, and forests, all hastening 
toward us from the horizon with the swift- 
ness of the wind itself ! 

The storm which had sent us downward 
marked a change of weather. Now little 
gusts began to push the balloon from right to 



MY FIRST BALLOON ASCENT «7 

left, up and down. From time to time the 
guide-rope— a great rope dangling one hun- 
dred yards long below our basket— would 
touch earth; and soon the basket, too, began 
to graze the tops of trees. 

What is called " guide-roping " thus began 
for me under conditions peculiarly instruc- 
tive. We had a sack of ballast at hand; and 
when some special obstacle rose in our path, 
like a tree or a house, we threw out a few 
handfuls of sand to leap up and pass over it. 
More than fifty yards of the guide-rope 
dragged behind us on the ground; and this 
was more than enough to keep our equilib- 
rium under the altitude of one hundred yards 
above which we decided not to rise for the 
rest of the trip. 

This first ascent allowed me to appreciate 
fully the utility of this simple part of the 
spherical balloon's rigging, without which its 
landing would usually present grave diffi- 
culties. When, for one reason or another,— 
humidity gathering on the surface of the bal- 
loon ; a downward stroke of wind ; accidental 
loss of gas; or, more frequently, the passing 



48 MY AIR-SHIPS 

of a cloud before the face of the sun,— the 
balloon came back to earth with disquieting 
speed, the guide-rope would come to rest in 
part on the ground, and so, unballasting the 
whole system by so much of its weight, 
stopped or at least eased the fall. Under con- 
trary conditions, any too rapid upward ten- 
dency of the balloon was counterbalanced by 
the lifting of the guide-rope off the ground, 
so that a little more of its weight became 
added to the weight of the floating system of 
the moment before. 

Like all human devices, however, the guide- 
rope, along with its advantages, has its in- 
conveniences. Its rubbing along the uneven 
surfaces of the ground — over fields and 
meadows, hills and valleys, roads and houses, 
hedges and telegraph wires — gives violent 
shocks to the balloon. Or it may happen that 
the guide-rope, rapidly unraveling the snarl 
in which it has twisted itself, catches hold 
of some asperity of the surface, or winds itself 
around the trunk or branches of a tree. Such 
an incident was alone lacking to complete my 
instruction. 






MY FIRST BALLOON ASCENT 49 

As we passed a little group of trees, a shock 
stronger than any hitherto felt threw us back- 
ward in the basket. The balloon had stopped 
short and was swaying in the wind-gusts at 
the end of its guide-rope, which had coiled it- 
self around the head of an oak. For a quar- 
ter of an hour it kept us shaking like a salad- 
basket; and it was only by throwing out a 
quantity of ballast that we finally got our- 
selves loose. The lightened balloon made a 
tremendous leap upward and pierced the 
clouds like a cannon-ball. Indeed, it threat- 
ened to reach dangerous heights, considering 
the little ballast we had remaining in store for 
use in descending. It was time to have re- 
course to effective means — to open the ma- 
noeuver valve and let out a portion of our gas. 

It w r as the work of a moment. The balloon 
began descending to earth again, and soon 
the guide-rope again, rested on the ground. 
There was nothing to do but to bring the trip 
to an end, because only a few handfuls of sand 
remained to us. 

He who wishes to navigate an air-ship 
should first practise a good many landings in 



5 o MY AIR-SHIPS 

a spherical balloon— that is, if he wishes to 
land without breaking balloon, keel, motor, 
rudder, propeller, water-ballast cylinders, and 
fuel-holders. 

The wind being rather strong, it was nec- 
essary to seek shelter for this last manoeuver. 
At the end of the plain, a corner of the Forest 
of Fontainebleau was hurrying toward us. 
In a few moments we had turned the extrem- 
ity of the wood, sacrificing our last handful 
of ballast. The trees now protected us from 
the violence of the wind ; and we cast anchor, 
at the same time opening wide the emergency 
valve for the wholesale escape of the gas. 

The twofold manoeuver landed us without 
the least dragging. We set foot on solid 
ground, and stood there, watching the balloon 
die. Stretched out in the field, it was losing 
the remains of its gas in convulsive agita- 
tions, like a great bird that dies beating its 
wings. 

After taking a dozen instantaneous photo- 
graphs of the dying balloon, we folded it and 
packed it in the basket, with its netting folded 
alongside. The little chosen corner in which 



MY FIRST BALLOON ASCENT 51 

we had landed formed part of the grounds of 
the Chateau de La Ferriere, belonging to M. 
Alphonse de Rothschild. Laborers from a 
neighboring field were sent for a conveyance 
to the village of La Ferriere itself, and half 
an hour later a break came. Putting every- 
thing into it, we set off to the railway station, 
which was some two miles and a half distant. 
There we had some work to lift the basket 
with its contents to the ground, as it weighed 
four hundred and forty pounds. At 6.30 we 
were back in Paris, after a journey of more 
than sixty miles and nearly two hours passed 
in- the air. 



CHAPTER IV 

MY " BRAZIL," SMALLEST OF SPHERICAL 
BALLOONS 

I LIKED ballooning so much that, com- 
ing back from my first trip with M. 
Machuron, I told him that I wanted a bal- 
loon built for myself. He liked the idea, but 
thought that I wanted an ordinary-sized 
spherical balloon, between 500 and 2000 cubic 
meters in volume. No one would think of 
making one smaller. 

It is only a short time ago, but it is curious 
how constructors still clung to heavy ma- 
terials. The smallest balloon-basket had to 
weigh 66 pounds. Nothing was light- 
neither envelop, rigging, nor accessories. 

I gave M. Machuron my ideas. He cried 
out against it when I told him I wanted a 
balloon of the lightest and toughest Japa- 
nese silk, about 3500 cubic feet in volume. 

52 



MY "BRAZIL" 53 

At the works, both he and M. Lachambre 
tried to prove to me that the thing- was im- 
possible. 

How often have things been proved to me 
impossible ! Now I am used to it, I expect it. 
But in those days it troubled me. Still I per- 
severed. 

They showed me that for a balloon to have 
" stability/' it must have a certain weight. 
Again, a balloon of ioo cubic meters, they 
said, would be affected by the movements of 
the aeronaut in his basket much more than a 
large balloon of regulation size. 

With a large balloon the center of gravity 
in the weight of the aeronaut is as in Figure 
i, a. When the aeronaut moves, say, to the 
right in his basket, Figure I, b, the center of 
gravity of the whole system is not shifted ap- 
preciably. 

In a very small balloon, the center of grav- 
ity, Figure 2 3 a, is undisturbed only so long 
as the aeronaut sits straight in the center of 
his basket. When he moves to the right the 
center of gravity, Figure 2, b, is shifted be- 
yond the vertical line of the balloon's circum- 



54 



MY AIR-SHIPS 



ference, causing the balloon to swing in the 
same direction. 

Therefore, they said, your necessary move- 




FlG. I 




Fig. 2 



ments in the basket will cause your little bal- 
loon to roll and swing continually. 

" We shall make the suspension tackle 



MY "BRAZIL" 55 

longer in proportion/' I replied. It was done, 
and the " Brazil " proved remarkably stable. 

When I brought my light Japanese silk to 
M. Lachambre, he looked at it and said: " It 
will be too weak." But when we came to try 
it with the dynamometer it surprised us. , 
Tested thus, Chinese silk stands over 2200 
pounds strain to the linear yard. The thin 
Japanese silk stood a strain of 1540 pounds; 
that is, it proved to be thirty times stronger 
than necessary according to the theory of 
strains. This is astonishing when you con- 
sider that it weighs only a little more than one 
ounce per square yard. To show how experts 
may be mistaken in their merely offhand judg- 
ments, I have been building my air-ship bal- 
loons of this same material; yet the inside 
pressure they have to stand is enormous, 
while all spherical balloons have a great hole 
in the bottom to relieve it. 

As the proportions finally adopted for the 
" Brazil " were 4104 cubic feet, correspond- 
ing to about 135 square yards of silk sur- 
face, the whole envelop weighed less than 8 
pounds. But the weight of the varnish— three 



56 MY AIR-SHIPS 

coats— brought it up to about 31 pounds. The 
net, which often weighs into^he hundreds of 
pounds, weighed nearly 4 pounds. The bas- 
ket which usually weighs 66 pounds at a mini- 
mum, weighed 13 pounds (the basket which I 
now have with my little " No. 9 " weighs less 
than 11 pounds). My guide-rope, small, but 
very long, — 100 yards,— weighed at most 
17^ pounds; its length gave the " Brazil " a 
good spring. Instead of an anchor, I put in a 
little grappling-iron of 6]/ 2 pounds. 

Making everything light in this way, I 
found that in spite of the smallness of the bal- 
loon, it would have ascensional force to take 
up my own weight of no pounds and 66 
pounds of ballast. As a matter of fact, I took 
up that amount on my first trip. On another 
occasion, when a French cabinet minister 
was present, anxious to see the smallest spher- 
ical balloon ever made, I had practically no 
ballast at all— only 10 or n pounds. Never- 
theless, causing the balloon to be weighed, I 
went up and made a good ascent. 

The " Brazil " was very handy in the air, 
easy to control. It was easy to pack also, on 



w 




in 



o 
3 





MY "BRAZIL" 59 

descending; and the story that I carried it in a 
valise is true. 

Before starting out in my little " Brazil/' I 
made from twenty-five to thirty ascents in or- 
dinary spherical balloons, quite alone, as my 
own captain and sole passenger. M. Lacham- 
bre had many public ascents, and allowed me 
to do some of them for him. Thus I made as- 
cents in many parts of France and Belgium. 
As I got the pleasure and the experience, and 
paid all my expenses and damages, it was a 
mutually advantageous arrangement. 

I do not believe that, without such previous 
study and experience with a spherical balloon, 
a man can be capable of succeeding with an 
elongated dirigible balloon, whose handling is 
so much more delicate. Before attempting to 
direct an air-ship, it is necessary to have 
learned in an ordinary balloon the conditions 
of the atmospheric medium, to have become 
acquainted with the caprices of the wind, and 
to have gone thoroughly into the difficulties 
of the ballast problem from the triple point of 
view of starting, of equilibrium in the air, and 
of landing at the end of the trip. 



6o 



MY AIR-SHIPS 



To have been one's self the captain of an 
ordinary balloon at the very least a dozen 
times seems to me an indispensable prelimi- 
nary to acquiring an exact notion of the requi- 
sites for constructing and handling an elon- 
gated balloon furnished with its motor and 
propeller. 

Naturally I am filled with amazement when 
I see inventors who have never set foot in the 
basket drawing up on paper — and even exe- 
cuting in whole or in part— fantastic air- 
ships whose balloons are to have a capacity 
of thousands of cubic meters, loaded down 
with enormous motors which they do not suc- 
ceed in raising from the ground, and fur- 
nished with machinery so complicated that 
nothing works ! Such inventors are afraid of 
nothing, because they have no idea of the diffi- 
culties of the problem. Had they previously 
journeyed through the air at the wind's will 
and amid all the disturbing influence of atmo- 
spheric phenomena, they would understand 
that a dirigible balloon, to be practical, re- 
quires first of all to have the utmost extreme 
of simplicity in all its mechanism. 



MY "BRAZIL" 6 1 

Some of the unhappy constructors who 
have paid with their lives the forfeit of their 
rashness had never made a single responsible 
ascent as captain of a spherical balloon. And 
the majority of their emulators, now so de- 
votedly laboring, are in the same inexperi- 
enced condition. This is my explanation of 
their lack of success. They are in the condi- 
tion in which the first-comer would find him- 
self were he to agree to build and steer a trans- 
atlantic liner without having ever quitted land 
or set foot in a boat ! 



CHAPTER V 

THE REAL AND THE IMAGINARY DANGERS 
OF BALLOONING 

ONE of the most astonishing adventures 
I had during this period of spherical 
ballooning took place directly over Paris. 

I had started from Vaugirard, with four in- 
vited guests, in a large balloon constructed 
for me after I had tired of making solitary 
trips in the little " Brazil/' 

From the start there seemed to be very lit- 
tle wind. I rose slowly, seeking an air-cur- 
rent. At a height of three fifths of a mile I 
found nothing. At about one mile we still re- 
mained almost stationary. Throwing out 
more ballast, we rose to one mile and a quar- 
ter, when a vagrant breeze started to take us 
over the center of Paris. 

When we had arrived at a point over the 

62 



DANGERS OF BALLOONING 63 



1 



Louvre— it left us! We descended— and 
found nothing! 

Then happened the ludicrous thing. In a 
blue sky without a cloud, bathed in sunlight, 
and with the faint yelps of all the dogs of Paris 
mounting to our ears, we lay becalmed! Up 
we went again, hunting an air-current. Down 
we went again, hunting an air-current. Up 
and down, up and down! Hour after hour 
passed; and we remained hanging always 
over Paris ! 

At first we laughed. Then we grew tired. 
Then almost alarmed. At one time I had even 
the idea of landing in Paris itself, near the 
Gare de Lyon, where I perceived an open 
space. Yet the attempt would have be^n dan- 
gerous, because my four companion^ 1?ould not 
be depended on for coolness in an emergency. 
They had not the ballooning habit. 

Worst of all, we were now losing gas. 
Drifting slowly eastward hour after hour, one 
by one the sacks of ballast had been emptied. 
By the time that we had reached the Yin- 
cennes wood we had begun to throw out mis- 
cellaneous objects — ballast-sacks, the lunch- 



64 MY AIR-SHIPS 

eon-baskets, two light camp-stools, two ko- 
daks, and a case of photographic plates! 

All during this latter period we were quite 
low — not over three hundred yards above the 
tree-tops. Now, as we sank lower, we had a 
real fright. Would not the guide-rope at last 
curl itself around some tree and hold us there 
for hours? So we struggled to maintain our 
altitude above the tree-tops, until all at once a 
queer little wind-gust took us over the Vin- 
cennes race-course. 

" Now is our time ! " I exclaimed to my 
companions. " Hold fast ! " 

With this I pulled on the valve-rope, and we 
came down with celerity but scarcely any 
shock. 

Personally, I have felt not only fear but also 
pain and real despair in a spherical balloon. 
It has not been often, because no sport is more 
regularly safe and mild and pleasurable. 
Such real dangers as it has are confined usu- 
ally to the landing, and the balloonist of expe- 
rience knows how to meet them; while its 
imaginary dangers in the air are— in the 
air. Therefore the particular adventure full 



DANGERS OF BALLOONING 65 

of pain and fear that I recall to mind was all 
the more remarkable in that it occurred in 
high altitude. 

It happened at Nice in 1900, when I went 
up from the Place Massena in a good-sized 
spherical balloon, alone, and intending to drift 
a few hours only amid the enchanting scenery 
of the mountains and the sea. 

The weather was fine; but the barometer 
soon fell, indicating storm, For a time the 
wind took me in the direction of Cimiez; but 
as it threatened to carry me out to sea, I threw 
out ballast, abandoned the current, and 
mounted to the height of about a mile. 

Shortly after this I let the balloon go down 
again, hoping to find a safe air-current; but 
when within three hundred yards of the 
ground, near the Var, I noticed that I had 
ceased descending. As I had determined to 
land soon in any case, I pulled on the valve- 
rope and let out more gas. And here the ter- 
rible experience began ! 

I could not go down ! I glanced at the ba- 
rometer and found, indeed, that I was going 
up ! Yet I ought to be descending, and I felt 



66 MY AIR-SHIPS 

—by the wind and everything— that I must be 
descending ! Had I not let out gas ? 

To my great uneasiness I discovered only 
too soon what was wrong. In spite of my con- 
tinuous apparent descent, I was, nevertheless, 
being lifted by an enormous column of air 
rushing upward ! While I fell in it I rose rap- 
idly higher with it ! 

I opened the valve again. It was useless. 
The barometer showed that I had reached a 
still greater altitude; and I could now take 
account of the fact by the way in which the 
land was disappearing under me. I now 
closed the valve to save my gas. There was 
nothing but to wait and see what would 
happen. 

The upward-rushing column of air con- 
tinued to take me to a height of three thousand 
meters (almost two miles). I could do no- 
thing but watch the barometer. Then, after 
what seemed a long time, it showed that I had 
begun descending. 

When I began to see land, I threw out bal- 
last, not to strike the earth too quickly. Now 
I could perceive the storm beating the trees 



DANGERS OF BALLOONING 67 

and shrubbery. Up in the storm itself I had 
felt nothing. 

Now, too, as I continued falling lower, I 
could see how swiftly I was being carried lat- 
terally. By the time I perceived the coming 
danger I was in it. Carried along at a terrific 
rate, knocking against the tops of trees and 
continually threatened with a painful death, I 
threw out my anchor. It caught in trees and 
shrubs and broke away. Had it been heavy 
timber, all would have been over with me. As 
it chanced, I was dragged through the small 
trees and yielding shrubbery, my face a mass 
of cuts and bruises, my clothes torn from my 
back, in pain and strain, fearing the worst 
and able to do nothing to save myself ! Just as 
I had given myself up for lost, the guide-rope 
wound itself around a tree and held. I was 
precipitated from the basket and fell uncon- 
scious. When I came to, I had to walk several 
miles until I found some peasants. They 
helped me back to Nice, where I went to bed 
and had the doctors sew me up. 

During the early period when I was glad to 
make public ascents for my balloon-con- 



68 MY AIR-SHIPS 

structor, I had undergone a somewhat similar 
experience, and that by night. The ascent 
took place at Peronne, in the north of France, 
one stormy afternoon, quite late. Indeed, I 
started in spite of thunder threatening in the 
distance, a gloomy, semi-twilight all around 
me, and the remonstrances of the public, 
among whom it was known that I was not an 
aeronaut by trade. They feared my inexperi- 
ence, and wished me either to renounce the as- 
cent or else to oblige me to take up the balloon- 
constructor with me, he being the responsible 
organizer of the fete. 

I would listen to nothing, and started off as 
I had planned. Soon I had cause to regret 
my rashness. I was alone, lost in the clouds, 
amid flashes of lightning and claps of thun- 
der, in the rapidly approaching darkness of 
the night ! 

On, on I went tearing in the blackness. I 
knew that I must be going with great speed, 
yet felt no motion. I heard and felt the storm. 
I formed a part of the storm ! I felt myself in 
great danger, yet the danger was not tangible. 
With it there was a fierce kind of joy. What 



DANGERS OF BALLOONING 69 

shall I say? How shall I describe it? Up 
there in the black solitude, amid the lightning- 
flashes and the thunder-claps, I was a part of 
the storm! ... 

When I landed the next morning— long 
after I had sought a higher altitude and let the 
storm pass on beneath me — I found that I was 
well into Belgium. The dawn was peaceful, 
so that my landing took place without diffi- 
culty. I mention this adventure because it 
was made account of in the papers of the time, 
and to show T that night-ballooning, even in a 
storm, may be more dangerous in appearance 
than in reality. Indeed, night-ballooning has 
a charm that is all its own. 

One is alone in the black void, true, in a 
murky limbo where one seems to float without 
weight, without a surrounding world, a soul 
freed from the weight of matter! Yet, now 
and again there are the lights of earth to 
cheer one. We see a point of light far on 
ahead. Slowly it expands. Then where there 
was one blaze, there are countless bright 
spots. They run in lines, with here and there 
a brighter cluster. We know that it is a city. 



7o MY AIR-SHIPS 

Then, again, it is out into the lone land, with 
only a faint glow here and there. When the 
moon rises we see, perhaps, a faint curling line 
of gray. It is a river, with the moonlight fall- 
ing on its waters. 

There is a flash upward and a faint roar. 
It is a railway train, the locomotive's fires, 
maybe, illuminating for a moment its smoke 
as it rises. 

Then, for safety, we throw out more ballast 
and rise through the black solitudes of the 
clouds into a soul-lifting burst of splendid 
starlight. There, alone with the constella- 
tions, we await the dawn ! 

And when the dawn comes, red and gold 
and purple in its glory, one is almost loath to 
seek the earth again, although the novelty of 
landing in who knows what part of Europe 
affords still another unique pleasure. 

For many the great charm of all ballooning 
lies here. The balloonist becomes an explorer. 
Say that you are a young man who would 
roam, who would enjoy adventures, who 
would penetrate the unknown and deal with 
the unexpected ; but say that you are tied down 



DANGERS OF BALLOONING 71 

at home by family and business. I advise you 
to take to spherical ballooning. At noon you 
lunch peaceably amid your family. At 2 p.m. 
you mount. Ten minutes later you are no 
longer a commonplace citizen — you are an ex- 
plorer, an adventurer of the unknown as truly 
as they who freeze on Greenland's icy moun- 
tains or melt on India's coral strands. 

You know but vaguely where you are, and 
cannot know where you are going. Yet much 
may depend upon your choice as well as your 
skill and experience. The choice of altitude 
is yours, whether to accept this current or 
mount higher and go with another. You may 
mount above the clouds, where one breathes 
oxygen from tubes, while the earth, in the last 
glimpse you had of it, seems to spin beneath 
you and you lose all bearings ; or you may de- 
scend and scud along the surface, aided by 
your guide-rope and adipperful of ballast to 
leap over trees and houses — giant leaps made 
without effort ! 

Then, when the time comes to land, there is 
the true explorer's zest of coming on unknown 
peoples like a god from a machine. " What 



72 MY AIR-SHIPS 

country is this ? " Will the answer come in 
German, Russian, or Norwegian? Paris 
Aero Club members have been shot at when 
crossing European frontiers ! Others, land- 
ing, have been taken prisoners to the burgo- 
master or the military governor, to languish 
as spies while the telegraph clicked to the far- 
off capital, and then to end the evening over 
champagne at an officers' enthusiastic mess! 
Still others have had to strive with the dan- 
gerous ignorance, and superstition even, of 
some remote little peasant population ! These 
are the chances of the winds ! 



CHAPTER VI 

I YIELD TO THE STEERABLE-BALLGON IDEA 

DURING my ascent with M. Machuron, 
while our guide-rope was wrapped 
around the tree and the wind was shaking us 
so outrageously, he improved the occasion to 
discourage me against all steerable ballooning. 

" Observe the treachery and vindictiveness 
of the wind ! " he cried between shocks. " We 
are tied to the tree, yet see with what force it 
tries to jerk us loose! [Here I was thrown 
again into the bottom of the basket.] What 
screw-propeller could hold a course against it ? 
What elongated balloon would not double up 
and take you flying to destruction? " 

It was discouraging. Returning to Paris 
by rail, I gave up the ambition to continue 
Giffard's trials; and this state of mind lasted 
with me for weeks. I would have argued flu- 
ently against the dirigibility of balloons! 

73 



74 MY AIR-SHIPS 

Then came a new period of temptation, for a 
long-cherished idea dies hard. When I took 
account of its practical difficulties, I found my 
mind working automatically to convince itself 
that they were not. I caught myself saying: 
" If I make a cylindrical balloon long enough 
and thin enough, it will cut the air; ... 3 
and, with respect to the wind: " Shall I not be 
as a sailing-yachtsman who is not criticized 
for refusing to go out in a squall? " 

At last an accident decided me. I have al- 
ways been charmed by simplicity, while com- 
plications, be they never so ingenious, repel 
me. Automobile tricycle motors happened to 
be very much perfected at the moment. I de- 
lighted in their simplicity; and, illogically 
enough, their merits had the effect of deciding 
my mind against all other objections to steer- 
able ballooning. 

" I will use this light and powerful motor," 
I said. " Giffard had no such opportunity! " 

Giffard's primitive steam-engine, weak in 
proportion to its weight, spitting red-hot 
sparks from its coal fuel, had afforded that 
courageous innovator no fair chance, I ar- 



THE STEERABLE-BALLOON IDEA 75 

gued. I did not dally a single moment with 
the idea of an electric motor, which promises 
little danger, it is true, but which has the capi- 
tal ballooning defect of being the heaviest 
known engine, counting the weight of its bat- 
tery. Indeed, I have so little patience with 
the idea, that I shall say no mpre about it ex- 
cept to repeat what Mr. Edison said to me on 
this head in April, 1902. " You have done 
well/' he said, " to choose the petroleum-mo- 
tor. It is the only one of w r hich an aeronaut 
can dream in the present state of the industry ; 
and steerable balloons with electric motors, 
especially as they were fifteen or twenty years 
ago, could have led to no result. That is why 
the Tissandier brothers gave them up/' 

In spite of the recent immense improve- 
ments made in the steam-engine, it would not 
have been able to decide me in favor of steer- 
able ballooning. Motor for motor, it is per- 
haps better than the petroleum-motor; but 
when you compare the boiler with the carbu- 
reter, the latter weighs grams per horse- 
power while the boiler weighs kilograms. In 
certain light steam-motors that are lighter, 



76 MY AIR-SHIPS 

even, than petroleum-motors, the boiler al- 
ways ruins the proportion. With one pound 
of petroleum you can exert one horse-power 
during one hour. To get this same energy 
from the most improved steam-engine you 
will want many kilograms of water and of 
fuel, be it petroleum or other. Even condens- 
ing the water, you cannot have less than sev- 
eral kilos per horse-power. 

Then, if you use coal fuel with the steam- 
motor, there are the burning sparks ; while if 
you use petroleum with burners, you have a 
great amount of fire. We must do the petro- 
leum-motor the justice to admit that it makes 
neither flame nor burning sparks ! 

At the present moment I have a Clement 
petroleum-motor that weighs but 4^ pounds 
per horse-power. This is my 60 horse-power 
" No. 7," whose total weight is but 264 
pounds. Compare this with the new steel- 
and-nickel battery of Mr. Edison, which prom- 
ises to weigh 40 pounds per horse-power ! 

The light weight and the simplicity of the 
little tricycle motor of 1897 are, therefore, re- 
sponsible for all my trials ! I started from this 



THE STEERABLE-BALLOON IDEA 77 

principle: to make any kind of success, it 
would be necessary to economize weight and 
so comply with the pecuniary as well as the 
mechanical conditions of the problem. 

Nowadays I build air-ships in a large way. 
I am in it as a kind of life-work. Then I 
was but a half-decided beginner, unwilling 
to spend large sums of money in a doubtful 
project. 

Therefore I resolved to build an elongated 
balloon, just large enough to raise, along with 
my own one hundred and ten pounds of 
weight, as much more as might be necessary 
for the basket and rigging, motor, fuel, and 
absolutely indispensable ballast. In reality I 
was building an air-ship to fit my little tricycle 
motor ! 

I looked for the workshop of some small 
mechanic near my residence in the center of 
residential Paris, where I could have my plans 
executed under my own eyes and could apply 
my own hands to the task. I found such a one 
in the Rue du Colisee. There I first worked 
out a tandem of two cylinders of a tricycle 
motor — that is, their prolongation one after 



78 MY AIR-SHIPS 

the other to work the same connecting-rod 
while fed by a single carbureter. 

To bring everything down to a minimum 
weight, I cut out from every part of the motor 
whatever was not strictly necessary to so- 
lidity. In this way I realized something that 
was interesting in those days — a 3^ horse- 
power motor that weighed 66 pounds. 

I soon had an opportunity to test my tan- 
dem motor. The great series of automobile 
road-races which seems to have had its climax 
in Paris-Madrid in 1903 was raising the 
power of these wonderful engines by leaps and 
bounds year after year. Paris-Bordeaux, in 
1895, was won with a 4 horse-power machine 
at an average speed of 15^ miles per hour. 
In 1896, Paris-Marseilles-and-return was ac- 
complished at the rate of 18^ miles per hour. 
Now, in 1897, it was Paris- Amsterdam. Al- 
though not entered for the race, it occurred to 
me to try my tandem motor attached to its 
original tricycle. I started, and, to my con- 
tentment, found that I could keep well up with 
the pace. Indeed, I might have won a good 
place in the finish— my vehicle was the most 



THE STEERABLE-BALLOON IDEA 79 

powerful of the lot in proportion to its 
weight, and the average speed of the winner 
was only 25 miles per hour— had I not begun 
to fear that the jarring of my motor in so 
strenuous an effort might in the long run de- 
range it; and I imagined I had more impor- 
tant work for it to do. 

For that matter, my automobiling experi- 
ence has stood me in good stead with my air- 
ships. The petroleum-motor is still a delicate 
and capricious thing; and there are sounds in 
its spitting rumble that are intelligible only to 
the long-experienced ear. Should the time 
come in some future flight of mine when the 
motor of my air-ship threatens danger, I am 
convinced that my ear will hear, and I shall 
heed the warning. This almost instinctive 
faculty I owe only to experience. Having 
broken up the tricycle for the sake of its mo- 
tor, I purchased at about this time an up-to- 
date 6 horse-power Panhard, with which I 
went from Paris to Nice in fifty-four hours, 
night and day, without stop; and had I not 
taken up dirigible ballooning, I must have be- 
come a road-racing automobile enthusiast, 



8o MY AIR-SHIPS 

continually exchanging one type for another, 
continually in search of greater speed, keeping 
pace with the progress of the industry, as so 
many others do, to the glory of French me- 
chanics and the new Parisian sporting spirit. 

But my air-ships stopped me. While ex- 
perimenting I was tied down to Paris. I could 
take no long trips ; and the petroleum-automo- 
bile, with its wonderful facility for finding 
fuel in every hamlet, lost its greatest use in 
my eyes. In 1898 I happened to see what 
was to me an unknown make of light Ameri- 
can electric buggy. It appealed alike to my 
eye, my needs, and my reason ; and I bought it. 
I have never had cause to regret the purchase. 
It serves me for running about Paris; and it 
goes lightly, noiselessly, and without odor. 

I had already handed the plan of my bal- 
loon-envelop to the constructors. It was that 
of a cylindrical balloon terminating fore and 
aft in cones, 823/2 feet long, with a diameter 
of 1 iy 2 feet, and a gas capacity of 6354 cubic 
feet. My calculations had left me only 66 
pounds for both the balloon material and its 
varnish. Therefore I gave up the usual net- 



i 

r 



J0 



- i f 




Motor of " No. i " 



THE STEERABLE-BALLOON IDEA 83 

work and chemise, or outer cover; indeed, I 
considered this second envelop, holding the 
balloon proper within it, to be not only super- 
fluous but harmful, if not dangerous. In- 
stead, I attached the suspension-cords of my 
basket directly to the balloon-envelop by 
means of small wooden rods, introduced into 
long horizontal hems sewed on both sides to its 
stuff for a great part of the balloon's length. 
Again, in order not to pass my 66 pounds in- 
cluding varnish, I was obliged to have re- 
course to my Japanese silk, which had proved 
so stanch in the " Brazil." 

After glancing at this order for the bal- 
loon-envelop, M. Lachambre at first refused 
it plumply. He would not make himself a 
party to such rashness. But when I recalled 
to his memory how he had said the same thing 
with respect to the " Brazil," and went on to 
assure him that, if necessary, I would cut and 
sew the balloon with my own hands, he gave 
way to me and undertook the job. He would 
cut and sew and varnish the balloon according 
to my plans. 

The balloon-envelop being thus put under 



84 MY AIR-SHIPS 

way, I prepared my basket, motor, propeller, 
rudder, and machinery. When they were 
completed I made many trials with them, sus- 
pending the whole system by a cord from the 
rafters of the workshop, starting the motor, 
and measuring the force of the forward swing 
caused by the propeller working on the atmo- 
sphere behind it. Holding back this forward 
movement by means of a horizontal rope at- 
tached to a dynamometer, I found that the 
traction-power developed by the motor in my 
propeller, with two arms each measuring one 
meter across, to be as high as 25 pounds. 
This was a figure that promised good speed 
to a cylindrical balloon of my dimensions, 
whose length was equal to nearly seven times 
its diameter. With 1200 turns to the minute, 
the propeller— -which was attached directly to 
the motor-shaft — might easily, if all went 
well, give the air-ship a speed of not less than 
26^2 feet per second. 

The rudder I made of silk stretched over a 
triangular steel frame. There now remained 
nothing to devise but a system of shifting 
weights, which, from the very first, I saw 



THE STEERABLE-BALLOON IDEA 85 

would be indispensable. For this purpose I 
placed two bags of ballast, one fore and one 
aft, suspended from the balloon-envelop by 
cords. By means of lighter cords each of 
these two weights could be drawn in to the 
basket (see Figure 3), thus shifting the cen- 




Fig. 3. 



ter of gravity of the whole system. Pull- 
ing in the fore weight would cause the stem 
of the balloon to point diagonally upward; 
pulling in the aft w r eight would have just 
the opposite effect. Besides these, I had 
a guide-rope some 60 meters (200 feet) long, 



86 MY AIR-SHIPS 

which could also be used, at need, as shifting 
ballast. 

All this occupied several months ; and the 
work was all carried on in the little machine- 
shop of the Rue du Colisee, only a few steps 
from the place where, later, the Paris Aero 
Club was to have its first offices. 



CHAPTER VII 

MY FIRST AIR-SHIP CRUISfiS (1898) 

IN the middle of September, 1898, I was 
ready to begin in the open air. The rumor 
had spread among the aeronauts of Paris, 
who formed the nucleus of the Aero Club, that 
I was going to carry up a petroleum-motor 
in my basket. They were sincerely disquieted 
by what they called my temerity; and some 
of them made friendly efforts to show me the 
permanent danger of such a motor under a 
balloon filled with a highly inflammable gas. 
They begged me, instead, to use the electric 
motor — " which is infinitely less dangerous/' 
I had arranged to inflate the balloon at the 
Jardin d'Acclimatation, where a captive bal- 
loon was already installed and furnished with 
everything needful daily. This gave me fa- 
cilities for obtaining, at one franc per cubic 

87 



88 MY AIR-SHIPS 

meter, the 180 cubic meters (6354 cubic feet) 
of hydrogen which I needed. 

On September 18 my first air-ship— the 
" Santos-Dumont No. 1," as it has since been 
called, to distinguish it from those which fol- 
lowed — lay stretched out on the turf amid the 
trees of the beautiful Jardin d'Acclimatation, 
the new Zoological Garden of the west of 
Paris. To understand what happened, I must 
explain the starting of spherical balloons 
from such places, where groups of trees and 
other obstructions surround the open space. 

When the weighing and balancing of the 
balloon are finished, and the aeronauts have 
taken their place in the basket, the balloon is 
ready to quit the ground with a certain as- 
censional force. Thereupon aids carry it 
toward an extremity of the open space, in 
the direction from which the wind happens to 
be blowing; and it is there that the order 
" Let go, all ! ,JI is given. In this way the 
balloon has the entire open space to cross be- 
fore reaching the trees or other obstructions 
which may be opposite, and toward which the 
wind would naturally carry it. So it has 



MY FIRST AIR-S /P CRUISES 89 

space and time to rise high enough to pass 
over them. Moreover, the ascensional force 
of the balloon is regulated accordingly: it 
is very little if the wind be light; it is more 
if the wind be stronger. 

I had thought that my air-ship would be 
able to go against the wind that was then 
blowing; therefore, I had intended to place 
it for the start at precisely the other end of 
the open space from that which I have de- 
scribed; that is, down-stream, and not up- 
stream in the air-current, with relation to the 
open space surrounded by trees. I would 
thus move out of the open space without dif- 
ficulty, having the wind against me; for, 
under such conditions, the relative speed of 
the air-ship ought to be the difference be- 
tween its absolute speed and the velocity of the 
wind; and so, by going against the air-cur- 
rent, I should have plenty of time to rise and 
pass over the trees. Evidently, it would be 
a mistake to place the air-ship at a point suit- 
able for an ordinary balloon without motor 
and propeller. 

And yet it was there that I did place it — 



9 o MWAT^R-SHIPS 

not by my own will, but by the will of the 
professional aeronauts who came in the crowd 
to be present, at my experiment. In vain I 
explained that, by placing myself " up- 
stream " in the wind with relation to the cen- 
ter of the open space, I should inevitably risk 
precipitating the air-ship against the trees be- 
fore I should have time to rise above them, the 
speed of my propeller being superior to that 
of the wind then blowing. 

All was useless. The aeronauts had never 
seen a dirigible balloon start off. They could 
not admit of its starting under other condi- 
tions than those of a spherical balloon, in 
spite of the essential difference between the 
two. As I was alone against them all, I had 
the weakness to yield. 

I started off from the very spot they indi- 
cated, and within a second's time I tore my 
air-ship against the trees, as I had feared I 
should do. After this, deny, if you can, the 
existence of a fulcrum in the air! 

This accident at least served to show the 
effectiveness of my motor and propeller in 
the air to those who doubted it before. 






o 



I 

en 



00 

00 




MY FIRST AIR-SHIP CRUISES 93 

I did not waste time in regrets. Two days 
later, on September 20, I actually started 
from the same open space — this time choos- 
ing my own starting-point. 

I passed over the tops of the trees without 
mishap, and at once began sailing around 
them, to give on the spot a first demonstra- 
tion of the air-ship to the great crowd of 
Parisians that had assembled. I had their 
sympathy and applause then, as I have had 
them ever since; the Parisian public has al- 
ways been a kind and enthusiastic witness of 
my efforts. 

Under the combined action of the propeller 
impulse, of the steering-rudder, of the dis- 
placement of the guide-rope, and of the two 
sacks of ballast sliding backward and for- 
ward as I willed, I had the satisfaction of 
making my evolutions in every direction — 
to right and left, and up and down. 

Such a result encouraged me; and, being 
inexperienced, I made the great mistake of 
mounting high in the air — some 1300 feet — 
an altitude that is considered nothing for a 
spherical balloon, but which is absurd and 



94 MY AIR-SHIPS 

uselessly dangerous for an air-ship under 
trial. 

At this height I commanded a view of all 
the monuments of Paris. I continued my 
evolutions in the direction of the Longchamps 
race-course, which from that day I chose for 
the scene of my aerial experiments. 

So long as I continued to ascend, the hy- 
drogen increased in volume as a consequence 
of the atmospheric depression. So, by its ten- 
sion, the balloon was kept taut and every- 
thing went well. It was not the same when I 
began descending. The air-pump, which was 
intended to compensate the contraction of the 
hydrogen, was of insufficient capacity. The 
balloon, a long cylinder, all at once began to 
fold in the middle like a pocket-knife, the ten- 
sion of the cords became unequal, and the 
balloon-envelop was on the point of being 
torn by them. At that moment I thought that 
all was over, — the more so as the descent 
which had begun could no longer be checked 
by any of the usual means on board, where 
nothing worked. 

The descent became a fall. Luckily, I was 





First Phase 





lift 

Second Phase 



-mm. i *-;■;■ 

Third Phase 

Accident to " No. I " — Doubling up 



A 



MY FIRST AIR-SHIP CRUISES 97 

falling in the neighborhood of the grassy turf 
of Bagatelle, where some big boys were fly- 
ing kites. A sudden idea struck me. I cried 
to them to grasp the end of my guide-rope, 
which had already touched the ground, and 
to run as fast as they could with it against 
the wind! 

They were bright young fellows, and they 
grasped the idea and the rope at the same 
lucky instant. The effect of this help in ex- 
tremis was immediate and such as I had 
hoped. By the manoeuver we lessened the ve- 
locity of the fall, and so avoided what would 
otherwise have been a bad shaking-up, to say 
the least. 

I was saved for the first time! Thanking 
the brave boys, who continued aiding me to 
pack everything into the air-ship's basket, I 
finally secured a cab and took the relics back 
to Paris. 



CHAPTER VIII 

HOW IT FEELS TO NAVIGATE THE AIR 

NOTWITHSTANDING the breakdown, 
I felt nothing but elation that night. 
The sentiment of success filled me. I had 
navigated the air. 

I had performed every evolution prescribed 
by the problem. The breakdown itself had 
not been due to any cause foreseen by the 
professional aeronauts. 

I had mounted without sacrificing ballast. 
I had descended without sacrificing gas. My 
shifting weights had proved successful; and 
it would have been impossible not to recog- 
nize the capital triumph of these oblique 
flights through the air. No one had ever 
made them before. 

Of course, when starting, or shortly after 

leaving the ground, one has sometimes to 

throw out ballast to balance the machine, as 

9 8 



TO NAVIGATE THE AIR 99 

one may have made a mistake and started 
with the air-ship far too heavy. What I have 
referred to is manoeuvers in the air. 

My first impression of aerial navigation 
was, I confess, surprise to feel the air-ship 
going straight ahead. It was astonishing to 
feel the wind in my face. In spherical bal- 
looning we go with the wind and do not feel it. 
True, in rising and descending the spherical 
balloonist feels the friction of the atmosphere, 
and the vertical oscillation makes the flag 
flutter; but in the horizontal movement the 
ordinary balloon seems to stand still while 
the earth flies past under it. 

As my air-ship plowed ahead, the wind 
struck my face and fluttered my coat as on 
the deck of a transatlantic liner, though in 
other respects it will be more accurate to 
liken aerial to river navigation with a steam- 
boat. It is not like sail navigation; and all 
talk about " tacking " is meaningless. If 
there is any wind at all, it is in a given direc- 
tion, so that the analogy with a river current 
is complete. When there is no wind at all, 
we may liken it to the navigation of a smooth 

c.ofc. 



ioo MY AIR-SHIPS 

lake or pond. It will be well to understand 
this matter. 

Suppose that my motor and propeller push 
me through the air at the rate of 20 miles an 
hour. I am in the position of a steamboat 
captain whose propeller is driving him up or 
down the river at the rate of 20 miles an 
hour. Imagine the current to be 10 miles per 
hour. If he navigates against the current, 
he accomplishes 10 miles an hour with re- 
spect to the shore, though he has been travel- 
ing at the rate of 20 miles an hour through 
the water. If he goes with the current, he 
accomplishes 30 miles an hour with respect 
to the shore, though he has not been going 
any faster through the water. This is one 
of the reasons why it is so difficult to esti- 
mate the speed of an air-ship. 

It is also the reason why air-ship captains 
will always prefer to navigate for their own 
pleasure in calm weather, and, when they find 
an air-current against them, will steer ob- 
liquely upward or downward to get out of it. 
Birds do the same thing. The sailing yachts- 
man whistles for a fair breeze, without which 



TO NAVIGATE THE AIR 101 

he can do nothing; but the river-steamboat 
captain will always hug the shore to avoid 
the freshet, and will time his descent of the 
river by the outgoing rather than the incom- 
ing tide. We air-shipmen are steamboat cap- 
tains and not sailing yachtsmen. 

The navigator of the air, however, has one 
great advantage— he can leave one current 
for another. The air is full of varying cur- 
rents. Mounting, he will find an advanta- 
geous breeze or else a calm. These are 
strictly practical considerations, having no- 
thing to do w 7 ith the air-ship's ability to battle 
with the breeze when obliged to do it. 

Before going on my first trip, I had won- 
dered if I should be seasick. I foresaw that 
the sensation of mounting and descending 
obliquely with my shifting weights might be 
unpleasant. And I looked forward to a good 
deal of pitching (tangdge), as they say on 
board ship. Of rolling there would not be 
so much. But both sensations would be novel 
in ballooning, for the spherical balloon gives 
no sensation of movement at all. 

In my first air-ship, however, the suspen- 



io2 MY AIR-SHIPS 

sipn was very long, approximating that of a 
spherical balloon. For this reason there was 
very little pitching. And, speaking generally, 
since that time, though I have been told that 
on this or that trip my air-ship pitched con- 
siderably, I have never been seasick. It may 
be due in part to the fact that I am rarely 
subject to this ill upon the water. Back and 
forth between Brazil and France, and between 
France and the United States, I have had ex- 
perience of all kinds of weather. Once, on 
the way to Brazil, the storm was so violent 
that the grand piano went loose and broke 
a lady's leg; yet I was not seasick. 

I know that what one feels most distress- 
ingly at sea is not so much the movement as 
that momentary hesitation just before the 
boat pitches, followed by the malicious dip- 
ping or mounting, which never comes quite 
the same, and the shock at top and bottom. 
All this is powerfully aided by the smells of 
the paint, varnish, and tar, mingled with the 
odors of the kitchen, the heat of the boilers, 
and the stench of the smoke and the hold. 

In the air-ship there is no smell. All is 



TO NAVIGATE THE AIR 103 

pure and clean. And the pitching itself has 
none of the shocks and hesitations of the boat 
at sea. The movement is suave and flowing, 
which is doubtless owing to the lesser resis- 
tance of the air-waves. The pitches are less 
frequent and rapid than those at sea; the dip 
is not brusquely arrested, so that the mind 
can anticipate the curve to its end; and there 
is no shock to give that queer " empty " sen- 
sation in the solar plexus. 

Furthermore, the shocks of a transatlan- 
tic liner are due first to the fore and then to 
the after part of the giant construction rising 
out of the water to plunge into it again. The 
air-ship never leaves its medium, — the air, — 
in which it only swings. 

This consideration brings me to the most 
remarkable of all the sensations of aerial nav- 
igation. It is the utterly new sensation of 
movement in an extra dimension. On my first 
trip it actually shocked me ! 

Man has never known anything like free 
vertical existence. Held to the plane of the 
earth, his movement " down " has scarcely 
been more than to return to it after a short 



104 MY AIR-SHIPS 

excursion " up," our minds remaining always 
on the plane surface even while our bodies 
may be mounting; and this is so much the 
case that the spherical balloonist, as he rises, 
has no sense of movement, but gains the im- 
pression that the earth is descending below 
him. 

With respect of combinations of vertical 
and horizontal movements, man is absolutely 
without experience. Therefore, as all our 
sensations of movement are practically in 
two dimensions, it is the extraordinary nov- 
elty of aerial navigation, that it affords us 
experiences — not in the fourth dimension, 
it is true — but in what is practically an extra 
dimension, the third, so that the miracle is 
similar. Indeed, I cannot describe the delight, 
the wonder and intoxication, of this free di- 
agonal movement onward and upward, or 
onward and downward, combined at will with 
brusque changes of direction horizontally 
when the air-ship answers to a touch of the 
rudder ! The birds have this sensation when 
they spread their wings and go tobogganing 
in curves and spirals through the sky. 



!2J 

o 




TO NAVIGATE THE AIR 107 

" Por mares nunca cT antes navegados ! " 
(O'er seas heretofore unsailed!) 

The line of our great poet echoed in my mem- 
, ory from childhood. After this first of all my 
cruises, I had it put on my flag, 

It is true that spherical ballooning had pre- 
pared me for the mere sensation of height; 
but that is a very different matter. It is there- 
fore curious that, prepared as I was on this 
score, the mere thought of height should have 
given me my only unpleasant experience. 
What I mean is this : 

The wonderful new combinations of verti- 
cal and horizontal movements, utterly out of 
previous human experience, caused me nei- 
ther surprise nor trouble. I would find my- 
self plowing diagonally upward through the 
air with a kind of instinctive liberty. xAjid yet 
when moving horizontally — as you would say, 
in the natural position — a glance downward 
at the housetops disquieted me. 

"What if I should fall?" the thought 
came. The housetops looked so dangerous, 
with their chimney-pots for spikes ! One sel- 



io8 MY AIR-SHIPS 

dom has this thought in a spherical balloon, 
because we know that the danger in the air 
is nil: the great spherical balloon can neither 
suddenly lose its gas nor burst. My little air- 
ship balloon had to support not only exterior 
but interior pressure as well, which is not the 
case with a spherical balloon, as I shall ex- 
plain in the next chapter; and any injury to 
the cylindrical form of my air-ship balloon by 
loss of gas might prove fatal. 

While over the housetops I felt that it 
would be bad to fall; but as soon as I left 
Paris and was navigating over the forests of 
the Bois de Boulogne, the idea left me en- 
tirely, Below there seemed to be a great 
ocean of greenery, soft and safe. 

It was while over the continuation of this 
greenery in the grassy pelouse of the Long- 
champs race-course that my balloon, having 
lost a great deal of its gas, began to double 
on itself. Previously I had heard a noise. 
Looking up, I saw that the long cylinder of 
the balloon was beginning to break. Then 
I was astonished and troubled. I wondered 
what I could do. 



TO NAVIGATE THE AIR 109 

I could not think of anything to do. I 
might throw out ballast. That would cause 
the air-ship to rise, and the decreased pres- 
sure of the atmosphere would doubtless per- 
mit the expanding gas to straighten out the 
balloon again, taut and strong. But I re- 
membered that I must always come down 
again, when all the danger would repeat it- 
self, and worse even than before, from the 
more gas I would have lost. There was no- 
thing to do but to go on down instantly. 

I remember having the sure idea: " If that 
balloon-cylinder doubles any more, the ropes 
by which I am suspended to it will work at 
different strengths and will begin to break, 
one by one, as I go down/' 

For the moment I was sure that I was 
in the presence of death. Well, I will tell it 
frankly, my sentiment was almost entirely 
that of waiting and expectation. 

"What is coming next?" I thought. 
" What am I going to see and know in a few 
minutes? Whom shall I see after I am 
dead?" 

The thought that I would be meeting my 



no MY AIR-SHIPS 

father in a few minutes thrilled me. Indeed, 
I think that in such moments there is no room 
for either regret or terror. The mind is too 
full of looking forward. One is frightened 
only so long as one still has a chance. 



CHAPTER IX 

EXPLOSIVE ENGINES AND INFLAMMABLE 
GASES 

I HAVE been so often and so sincerely 
warned against what is taken for granted 
to be the patent danger of operating explosive 
engines under masses of inflammable gases, 
that I may be pardoned for stopping a mo- 
ment to disclaim undue or thoughtless rash- 
ness. 

Very naturally, from the first the question 
of physical danger to myself called for con- 
sideration. I was the interested party; and 
I tried to view the question from all points. 
Well, the outcome of these meditations was 
to make me fear fire very little, while doubt- 
ing other possibilities against which no one 
ever dreamed of warning me. 

I remember that while working on the first 

of all my air-ships in that little carpenter- 

iii 



ii2 MY AIR-SHIPS 

shop of the Rue du Colisee I used to wonder 
how the vibrations of the petroleum-motor 
would affect the system when it got in the air. 

In those days we did not have the noiseless 
automobiles, free from vibration, of the pres- 
ent. Nowadays even the colossal 80- and 90- 
horse-power motors of the latest racing types 
can be started and stopped as gently as those 
great steel hammers in iron-foundries, whose 
engineers make a trick of cracking the top 
of an egg with them without breaking the rest 
of the shell. 

My tandem-motor, of two cylinders work- 
ing the same connecting-rod and fed by a 
single carbureter, realized 35^ horse-power, 
—at that time a considerable force for its 
weight, — and I had no idea how it would act 
off terra flrma. I had seen motors " jump " 
along the highway. What would mine do 
in its little basket that weighed almost no- 
thing, and suspended from a balloon that 
weighed less than nothing? 

You know the principle of these motors. 
One may say that there is gasolene in a re- 
ceptacle. Air, passing through it, comes out 



EXPLOSIVE ENGINES 113 

mixed with gasolene gas, ready to explode. 
You give a whirl to a crank, and the thing 
begins working automatically. The piston 
goes down, sucking combined gas and air into 
the cylinder. Then the piston comes back and 
compresses it. At that moment an electric 
spark is struck. An explosion follows in- 
stantly; and the piston goes down, producing 
work. Then it goes up, throwing out the 
product of combustion. Thus, with the two 
cylinders there was one explosion for every 
turn of the shaft. 

Wishing to have my mind clear on the 
question, I took my tricycle, just as it was af- 
ter I had left the Paris-Amsterdam race, and, 
accompanied by a capable companion, I 
steered it to a lonely part of the Bois de Bou- 
logne. There in the forest I chose a great 
tree with low-hanging limbs. From two of 
them we suspended the motor-tricycle by 
three ropes. 

When we had well established the suspen- 
sion, my companion aided me to climb up and 
seat myself on the tricycle saddle. I was as 
in a swing. In a moment I would start the 



ii 4 MY AIR-SHIPS 

motor and learn something of my future suc- 
cess or failure. 

Would the vibration of the explosive en- 
gine shake me back and forth, strain at the 
ropes until it had unequalized their tension, 
and then break them one by one? Would it 
jar the interior air-balloon's pump and de- 
range the big balloon's valves ? Would it con- 
tinually jerk and pull at the silk hems and 
the thin rods which were to hold my basket 
to the balloon? Free from the steadying in- 
fluence of the solid ground, would the jump- 
ing motor jar itself until it broke? And, 
breaking, might it not explode? 

All this and more had been predicted by the 
professional aeronauts; and I was depending 
solely on our carefully worked out theories. 

I started the motor. I felt no particular 
vibration; and I was certainly not being 
shaken. I increased the speed— and felt less 
vibration ! There could be no doubt about it : 
there was less vibration in this light-weight 
tricycle hanging in the air than I had regu- 
larly felt while traveling on the ground. It 
was my first triumph in the air ! 



EXPLOSIVE ENGINES 115 

I will say frankly that, as I rose in the air 
on my first trip, I had no fear of fire. What 
I feared was that the balloon might burst by 
reason of its interior pressure. I still fear it. 

Before going up I had minutely tried the 
valves. I still try them minutely before each 
of my trips. The danger, of course, was that 
the valves might not work adequately, in 
which case the expanding of the gas as the 
balloon rose would cause the dreaded explo- 
sion. Here is the great difference between 
spherical and dirigible balloons. The spher- 
ical balloon is always open. When it is taut 
with gas it is shaped like an apple; when it 
has lost part of its gas, it takes the shape of 
a pear; but in each case there is a great hole 
in the bottom of the spherical balloon,— where 
the stem of the apple or the pear would be,— 
and it is through this hole that the gas has 
opportunity to ease itself in the constant al- 
ternations of condensation and dilatation. 
Having such a free vent, the spherical balloon 
runs no risk of bursting in the air; but the 
price paid for this immunity is great loss of 
gas and, consequently, a fatal shortening of 



n6 MY AIR-SHIPS 

the spherical balloon's stay in the air. Some 
day a spherical balloonist will close up that 
hole. Indeed, they already talk of doing it. 

I was obliged to do it in my air-ship bal- 
loon, whose cylindrical form must be pre- 
served at all cost. For me there must be no 
transformations as from apple to pear. In- 
terior pressure only could guarantee me this. 
The valves to which I refer have since my 
first experiments been of all kinds, some very 
ingeniously interacting, others of extreme 
simplicity. But their object in each case has 
been the same— to hold the gas tight in the 
balloon up to a certain pressure, and then to 
let out only enough to relieve dangerous in- 
terior pressure. It is easy to realize, there- 
fore, that should these valves refuse to act 
adequately, the danger of bursting would be 
there. 

This possible danger I acknowledged to 
myself; but it had nothing to do with fire 
from the explosive motor. Yet during all my 
preparations, and up to the moment of call- 
ing, " Let go, all ! " the professional aero- 
nauts, completely overlooking this weak 



EXPLOSIVE ENGINES 117 

point of the air-ship, continued to warn me 
against fire, of which I had no fear at all. 

" Do we dare strike matches in the basket 
of a spherical balloon? " they asked. 

" Do we even permit ourselves the solace of 
a cigarette on trips that last for many 
hours?" 

To me the cases did not seem the same. In 
the first place, why should one not light a 
match in the basket of a spherical balloon? 
If it be only because the mind vaguely con- 
nects the ideas of gas and flame, the danger 
remains ideal. If it be because of a real pos- 
sibility of igniting gas that has escaped from 
the free hole in the stem of the spherical bal- 
loon, it would not apply to me. My balloon, 
hermetically closed except when excessive 
pressure should let either air or a very little 
gas escape through one of the automatic 
valves, might for a moment leave a little trail 
of gas behind it as it moved on horizontally 
or diagonally, but there would be none in 
front where the motor was. 

In this first air-ship I had placed the gas 
escape-valves even further from the motor 



n8 MY AIR-SHIPS 

than I place them to-day. The suspension- 
cords being very long, I hung in my basket 
far below the balloon. Therefore I asked my- 
self: 

" How could this motor, so far below the 
balloon and so far in front of its escape- 
valves, set fire to the gas inclosed in it when 
such gas is not inflammable until mixed with 
air?" 

On this first trial, as in most since, I 
used hydrogen gas. Undoubtedly when 
mixed with air it is tremendously inflamma- 
ble. But it must first mix with air. All my 
little balloon-models are kept filled with hy- 
drogen; and, so filled, I have more than once 
amused myself by burning inside them, not 
their hydrogen, but its mixture with the oxy- 
gen of the atmosphere. All one has to do 
is to insert in the balloon-model a little tube 
to furnish a jet of the room's atmosphere from 
an air-pump and light it with the electric 
spark. Similarly, should a pin-prick have 
made ever so slight a vent in my air-ship bal- 
loon, the interior pressure would have sent 
out into the atmosphere a long, thin stream of 



INFLAMMABLE GASES 119 

hydrogen that might have ignited — had there 
been any flame near enough to do it. But 
there was none. 

This was the problem. My motor did un- 
doubtedly send out flames for, say, half a yard 
round about it. The}/ were, however, mere 
flames, not still-burning products of incom- 
plete combustion like the sparks of a steam- 
engine. This admitted, how was the fact that 
I had a mass of hydrogen unmixed with air 
and well secured in a tight envelop so high 
above the motor to prove dangerous? 

Turning the matter over and over in my 
mind, I could see but one dangerous pos- 
sibility from fire. This was the possibility 
of the petroleum-reservoir itself taking fire 
by a retour de fiamme from the motor. Dur- 
ing five years, I may here say in passing, I en- 
joyed complete immunity from the retour de 
flamme. Then, in the same week in which 
Mr. Vanderbilt burned himself so severely, 
on July 6, 1903, the same accident overtook 
me in my little " No. 9 " runabout air-ship, 
just as I was crossing the Seine to land on the 
lie de Puteaux. I promptly extinguished the 



i2o MY AIR-SHIPS 

flame with my Panama hat, without other in- 
cident. 

For reasons like these I went up on my first 
air-ship trip without fear of fire, but not with- 
out doubt of a possible explosion due to insuf- 
ficient working of my balloon's escape-valves. 
Should such a . " cold " explosion occur, the 
flame-spitting motor would probably ignite 
the mass of mixed hydrogen and air that 
would surround me. But it would have no 
decisive influence on the result. The " cold " 
explosion itself would be sufficient. 

Now, after five years of experience, and 
in spite of the retour de Hamme above the lie 
de Puteaux, I continue to regard the danger 
from fire as practically null ; but the possibility 
of a " cold " explosion remains always with 
me, and I must continue to purchase immu- 
nity from it at the cost of vigilant attention 
to my gas-escape valves. Indeed, the possi- 
bility of the thing is greater, technically, now 
than in the early days which I describe. My 
first air-ship was not built for speed; conse- 
quently, it needed very little interior pressure 
to preserve the shape of its balloon. Now 



INFLAMMABLE GASES 123 

that I have great speed, as in my " No. 7," I 
must have enormous interior pressure to 
withstand the exterior pressure of the atmo- 
sphere in front of the balloon as I drive 
against it. 



CHAPTER X 

I GO IN FOR AIR-SHIP BUILDING 

IN the early spring of 1899 I built another 
air-ship, which the Paris public at once 
called the " Santos-Dumont No. 2." It had 
the same length and, at first sight, the same 
form as the " No. 1 "; but its greater diame- 
ter brought its volume up to over 7000 cubic 
feet, and gave me 144 pounds more ascen- 
sional force. I had taken account of the in- 
sufficiency of the air-pump that had all but 
killed me, and added a little aluminium venti- 
lator to make sure of permanency in the form 
of the balloon. 

This ventilator was a rotary fan worked 
by the motor to send air into the little in- 
terior air-balloon, which was sewed inside to 
the bottom of the great balloon like a kind 
of closed pocket. In Figure 4, G is the great 

balloon filled with hydrogen gas; A, the in- 

124 



AIR-SHIP BUILDING 



127 



terior air-balloon ; V V, the automatic gas- 
valves; AV, the air-valve; and TV, the tube 
by which the rotary ventilator fed the interior 
air-balloon. 




Fig. 4. 

The air-valve, AV, was an exhaust-valve 
similar to the two gas-valves, V V, in the 
great balloon, with the one exception that it 
was weaker. In this way, when there hap- 
pened to be too much fluid (i.e., gas or air, or 
both) distending the great balloon, all the air 
would leave before any of the gas. 

The first trial of my " No. 2 " was set for 
May 11, 1899. Unfortunately the weather, 
which had been fine in the morning, grew 
steadily rainy in the afternoon. In those 
days I had no balloon-house of my own. All 



i28 MY AIR-SHIPS 

the morning the balloon had been slowly 
filling with hydrogen gas at the captive-bal- 
loon station of the Jardin d'Acclimatation. 
As there was no shed there for me, the work 
had to be done in the open; and it was done 
vexatiously, with a hundred delays, surprises, 
and excuses. 

When the rain came on, it wetted the bal- 
loon. What was to be done? I must either 
empty it and lose the hydrogen and all my 
time and trouble, or go on under the dis- 
advantage of a rain-soaked balloon-envelop 
heavier than it ought to be. 

I chose to go up in the rain. No sooner 
had I risen than the weather caused a great 
contraction of the hydrogen, so that the long, 
cylindrical balloon shrunk visibly. Then, be- 
fore the air-pump could remedy the fault, a 
strong wind-gust of the rain-storm doubled 
it up worse than the " No. i," and tossed it 
into the neighboring trees. 

My friends began at me again, saying : 

' This time you have learned your lesson. 
You must understand that it is impossible to 
keep the shape of your cylindrical balloon 






AIR-SHIP BUILDING 



129 



rigid. You must not again risk your life by 
taking a petroleum-motor up beneath it." 

1 said to myself: 

" What has the rigidity of the balloon's 
form to do with danger from a petroleum- 
motor ? Errors do not count, I have learned 
my lesson, but it is not that lesson." 

Accordingly, I immediately set to work on 




Fig. 5. 



a " No. 3," with a shorter and very much 
thicker balloon, 66 feet long and 25 feet at its 
greatest diameter. (Figure 5.) Its much 



130 MY AIR-SHIPS 

greater gas capacity (17,650 cubic feet) 
would give it, with hydrogen, three times the 
lifting-power of my first and twice that of 
my second air-ship. This permitted me to 
use common illuminating gas, whose lifting- 
power is about half that of hydrogen. The 
hydrogen plant of the Jardin d'Acclimatation 
had always served me badly. With illumi- 
nating gas I should be free to start from the 
establishment of my balloon-constructor or 
elsewhere, as I desired. 

It will be seen that I was getting far away 
from the cylindrical shapes of my first two 
balloons. In the future I told myself that 
I would at least avoid doubling up. The 
rounder form of this balloon also made it pos- 
sible to dispense with the interior air-balloon 
and its feeding air-pump that had twice re- 
fused to work adequately at the critical mo- 
ment. Should this shorter and thicker bal- 
loon need aid to keep its form rigid, I relied on 
the stiffening effect of a 33-foot bamboo pole 
fixed lengthwise to the suspension-cords above 
my head and directly beneath the balloon. 

While not yet a true keel, this pole-keel 




" No. 2" Doubling up— Culmination, May 11, i£ 



AIR-SHIP BUILDING 133 

supported basket and guide-rope and brought 
my shifting-weights into much more effec- 
tual play. 

On November 13, 1899, I started in the 
" Santos-Dumont No. 3," from the estab- 
lishment of Vaugirard, on the most success- 
ful flight that I had yet made. 

From Vaugirard I went directly to the 
Champ de Mars, w T hich I had chosen for its 
clear, open space. There I was able to prac- 
tise aerial navigation to my heart's content, 
circling, driving ahead in straight courses, 
forcing the air-ship diagonally onward and 
upward and shooting diagonally downward 
by propeller-force, and thus acquiring mas- 
tery of my shifting-weights. These, because 
of the greater distance they were now set 
apart at the extremities of the pole-keel, 
worked with an effectiveness that astonished 
even myself. This proved my greatest tri- 
umph ; for it was already clear to me that the 
central truth of dirigible ballooning must be 
ever — " To descend without sacrificing gas, 
and to mount without sacrificing ballast/' 

During these first evolutions over the 



i 3 4 MY AIR-SHIPS 

Champ de Mars, I had no particular thought 
of the Eiffel Tower. At most, it seemed a 
monument worth going round; and so I cir- 
cled round it at a prudent distance again and 
again. Then— still without any dream of 
what the future had in store for me— I made 
a straight course for the Pare des Princes, 
over almost the exact line that, two years 
later, was to mark the Deutsch Prize route. 

I steered to the Pare des Princes because it 
was another fine open space. Once there, 
however, I was loath to descend: so, making 
a hook, I navigated to the manoeuver-grounds 
of Bagatelle, where I finally landed in sou- 
venir of my fall of the year previous. It was 
almost at the exact spot where the kite-flying 
boys had pulled on my guide-rope and saved 
me from a bad shaking-up. At this time, re- 
member, neither the Aero Club nor I pos- 
sessed a balloon-park or -shed from which to 
start and to which to return. 

On this trip I considered that, had the air 
been calm, my speed in relation to the ground 
would have been as much as fifteen miles per 
hour. In other words, I went at that rate 




"No. 3" 



AIR-SHIP BUILDING 137 

through the air, the wind being strong though 
not violent. Therefore, even had not senti- 
mental reasons led me to land at Bagatelle, I 
should have hesitated to return with the wind 
to the Vaugirard balloon-house, itself of small 
size and difficult access, and surrounded by all 
the houses of a busy quarter. , Landing in 
Paris, in general, is dangerous for any kind of 
balloon, amid chimney-pots that threaten to 
pierce its belly and tiles that are always ready 
to be knocked down on the heads of passers- 
*by. When, in the future, air-ships become as 
common as automobiles are at present, spa- 
cious public and private landing-stages will 
have to be built for them in every part of the 
capital. Already they have been foretold by 
Mr. Wells in his strange book " When the 
Sleeper Wakes." 

Considerations of this order made it desir- 
able for me to have a plant of my own. I 
needed a building for the housing of my air- 
ship between trips. Heretofore I had emptied 
the balloon of all its gas at the end of each 
trip, as one is bound to do with spherical bal- 
loons. Now I saw very different possibilities 



138 MY AIR-SHIPS 

for dirigibles. The significant thing was the 
fact that my " No. 3 " had lost so little gas 
(or, perhaps, none at all) at the end of its first 
long trip that I could well have housed it over- 
night and gone out again in it the next day ! 

I had no longer the slightest doubt of the 
success of my invention. I foresaw that I was 
going into air-ship construction as a sort of 
life-work. I should need my own workshop, 
my own balloon-house, hydrogen-plant, and 
connection with the illuminating-gas mains. 

The Aero Club had just acquired some land 
on the newly opened Coteaux de Longchamps 
at Saint Cloud ; and I concluded to build on it 
a great shed, long and high enough to house 
my air-ship with its balloon fully inflated, and 
furnished with all the facilities mentioned. 

This aerodrome, which I built at my own 
expense, was 100 feet long, 23 feet wide, and 
36 feet high. Even here I had to contend with 
the conceit and prejudice of artisans, which 
had already given me so much trouble at the 
Jardin d'Acclimatation. It was declared that 
the sliding doors of my aerodrome could not 
be made to slide on account of their great size. 



AIR-SHIP BUILDING 139 

I had to insist. " Follow my directions/' I 
said, " and do not concern yourselves with 
their practicability ! " Although the men had 
named their own pay, it was a long time be- 
fore I could get the better of this vainglorious 
stubbornness of theirs. When finished, the 
doors worked — naturally. Three years later 
the aerodrome built for me by the Prince of 
Monaco, on my plans, had still greater sliding 
doors. 

While this first of my balloon-houses was 
under construction, I made a number of other 
successful trips in the " No. 3," the last time 
losing my rudder and luckily landing on the 
plain at Ivry. I did not repair the " No. 3." 
Its balloon was too clumsy in form and its mo- 
tor was too weak. I had now my own aero- 
drome and gas-plant. I would build a new 
air-ship, and with it I should be able to ex- 
periment for longer periods and with more 
method. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE EXPOSITION SUMMER 

THE Exposition of 1900, with its learned 
congresses, was now approaching. Its 
International Congress of Aeronautics being 
set for the month of September, I resolved that 
the new air-ship should be ready to be shown 
to it. 

This was my " No. 4," finished August 1, 
1900, and by far the most familiar to the world 
at large of all my air-ships. This is due to 
the fact that when I won the Deutsch Prize, 
nearly eighteen months later and in quite a 
different construction, the newspapers of the 
world came out with old cuts of this " No. 4 " 
which they had kept on file. 

It was the air-ship with the bicycle saddle. 

In it the 33-foot bamboo pole of my " No. 3 " 

came nearer to being a real keel in that it no 

longer hung above my head, but— amplified by 

140 



m 



fif^v 




Motor of " No. 4' 



THE EXPOSITION SUMMER 143 

vertical and horizontal cross-pieces and a sys- 
tem of tightly stretched cords— it sustained 
within itself motor, propeller, and connecting 
machinery, petroleum-reservoir, ballast, and 
navigator, in a kind of spider-web without a 
basket. 

I was obliged to sit in the midst of the spi- 
der-web below the balloon, on the saddle of a 
bicycle-frame which I had incorporated into 
it. Thus the absence of the traditional bal- 
loon-basket appeared to leave me astride a 
pole in the midst of a confusion of ropes, 
tubes, and machinery. Nevertheless the de- 
vice was very handy, because round this bi- 
cycle frame I had united cords for controlling 
the shifting-weights, for striking the motor's 
electric spark, for opening and shutting the 
balloon's valves, for turning on and off the 
water-ballast spigots, and for certain other 
functions of the air-ship. Under my feet I 
had the starting-pedals of a new 7 horse- 
power petroleum-motor, driving a propeller 
with two wings, each 13 feet across. They 
were of silk stretched over steel plates and 
very strong. For steering, my hands reposed 



144 



MY AIR-SHIPS 



on the bicycle handle-bars connected with my 
rudder. 

Above all this there stretched the balloon, 
93 feet long, with a middle diameter of 17 
feet, and a gas capacity of nearly 15,000 cubic 
feet. In form it was a compromise between 
the slender cylinders of my first constructions 
and the clumsy compactness of my " No. 3." 




Fig. 6. 



( See Figure 6. ) For this reason I thought it 
prudent to give it an interior compensating 
air-balloon fed by a rotary ventilator like that 
of the " No. 2 " ; and as the balloon was 
smaller than its predecessor, I was obliged to 
return again to hydrogen to get sufficient lift- 
ing-power. For that matter, there was no 
longer any reason why I should not employ 



THE EXPOSITION SUMMER 145 

hydrogen. I now had my own hydrogen-gas 
generator; and my " No. 4," safely housed in 
the aerodrome, might be kept inflated during 
weeks. 

In the'" Santos-Dumont No. 4 " I also tried 
the experiment of placing the propeller at the 
stem instead of the stern of the air-ship. So, 
attached to the pole-keel in front, the screw 
pulled instead of pushing it through the air. 
The new 7 horse-power motor with two cylin- 
ders turned it with a velocity of one hundred 
revolutions per minute, and produced, from 
a fixed point, a traction-effort of some 66 
pounds. 

The pole-keel, with its cross-pieces, bicy- 
cle frame, and mechanism, weighed heavy. 
Therefore, although the balloon was filled 
with hydrogen, I could not take up more than 
no pounds of ballast. 

I made almost daily experiments with this 
new air-ship during August and September, 
1900, at the Aero Club's grounds at Saint 
Cloud; but my most memorable trial with it 
took place on September 19, in presence of the 
members of the International Congress of 



i 4 6 MY AIR-SHIPS 

Aeronautics. Although an accident to my 
rudder at the last moment prevented me from 
making a free ascent before these men of 
science, I nevertheless held my own against a 
very strong wind that was blowing at the time, 
and gave what they were good enough to pro- 
claim a satisfying demonstration of the effec- 
tiveness of an aerial propeller driven by a pe- 
troleum-motor. A distinguished member of 
the congress, Professor Langley, desired to 
be present a few days later at one of my usual 
trials; and from him I received the heartiest 
kind of encouragement. 

The result of these trials was, nevertheless, 
to decide me to double the propeller's power 
by the adoption of the four-cylinder type of 
petroleum-motor without water-jacket; that is 
to say, the system of cooling a ailettes. The 
new motor was delivered to me very promptly ; 
and I immediately set about adapting the air- 
ship to it. Its extra weight demanded either 
that I should construct a new balloon or else 
enlarge the old one. I tried the latter course. 
Cutting the balloon in half, I had a piece put in 
it, as one puts a leaf in an extension-table. 



THE EXPOSITION SUMMER 149 

This brought the balloon's length to 109 feet. 
Then I found that the aerodrome was too 
short, by 10 feet, to receive it! In provision 
for future needs, I added 13 feet to its length. 

Motor, balloon, and shed were all trans- 
formed in fifteen days. The Exposition was 
still open; but the autumn rains had set in. 
After waiting with the balloon filled with hy- 
drogen through two weeks of the worst pos- 
sible weather, I let out the gas and began ex- 
perimenting with the motor and propeller. It 
was not lost time: for, bringing the speed of 
the propeller up to 140 revolutions per minute, 
I realized, from a fixed point, a traction-effort 
of 120 pounds. Indeed, the propeller turned 
with such force that I was stricken with pneu- 
monia in its current of cold air. 

I betook myself to Nice for the pneumonia ; 
and there, while convalescing, an idea came to 
me. This new idea took the form of my first 
true air-ship keel. 

In a small carpenter-shop at Nice I worked 
it out with my own hands — a long, triangular- 
sectioned pine framework of great lightness 
and rigidity. Though 59^ feet in length, it 



rso MY AIR-SHIPS 

weighed only 90 pounds. Its joints were of 
aluminum; and, to secure its lightness and 
rigidity, to cause it to offer less resistance to 
the air, and to make it less subject to hygro- 
metric variations, it occurred to me to rein- 
force it with tightly drawn piano-wires in- 
stead of cords. 

Then followed what turned out to be an en- 
tirely new idea in aeronautics. I asked myself 
why I should not use this same piano-wire for 
all my dirigible balloon suspensions in place of 
the cords and ropes used in all kinds of bal- 
loons up to this time. I did it ; and the inno- 
vation turned out to be peculiarly valuable. 
These piano-wires, 0.032 inch in diameter, 
possess a high coefficient of rupture and a 
surface so slight that their substitution for 
the ordinary cord suspensions constitutes a 
greater progress than many a more showy 
device. Indeed, it has been calculated that 
the cord suspensions offered almost as much 
resistance to the air as did the balloon itself! 

At the stern of this air-ship keel I again es- 
tablished my propeller. I had found no ad- 
vantage result from placing it in front on my 



THE EXPOSITION SUMMER 



151 



" No. 4," where it was an actual hindrance to 
the free working of the guide-rope. The pro- 
peller was now driven by a new 12 horse- 
power four-cylinder motor without water- 
jacket, through the intermediary of a long, 
hollow steel shaft. Placing this motor in the 
center of the keel (" Motor/' Figure 7), I bal- 
anced its weight by taking my position in my 




Fig. 7. 



basket well to the front (" Navigator/' Figure 
7), while the guide-rope hung suspended from 
a point still further in front (" Guide-Rope/' 
Figure 7). To it, some distance down its 
length, I fastened the end of a lighter cord run 



!5 2 



MY AIR-SHIPS 



up to a pulley fixed in the after-part of the 
keel and thence to my basket, where I fastened 
it convenient to my hand (" Guide-Rope 
Shifter/' Figure 7). Thus I made the guide- 




Fig. 8. 



THE EXPOSITION SUMMER 153 

rope do the work of shifting-weights. Im- 
agine, for example, that going on a straight 
horizontal course, as in Figure 7, I should de- 
cide to rise. I would have but to pull in the 
guide-rope shifter. It would pull the guide- 
rope itself back (Figure 8), and thus shift 
back the center of gravity of the whole system 
that much. The stem of the air-ship would 
rise (as in Figure 8), and, consequently, my 
propeller-force would push me up along the 
new diagonal line. 

The rudder was fixed at the stern, as usual ; 
and water-ballast cylinders, accessory shift- 
ing-weights, petroleum-reservoir, and the 
other parts of the machinery were disposed in 
the new keel, well balanced. For the first 
time in these experiments — as well as the first 
time in aeronautics— I used liquid ballast. 
Two brass reservoirs, very thin and holding 
altogether twelve gallons, were filled with wa- 
ter and fixed in the keel, as above stated, be- 
tween motor and propeller; and their two 
spigots were so arranged that they could be 
opened and shut from my basket by means of 
two steel wires. 



i54 MY AIR-SHIPS 

Before this new keel was fitted to the en- 
larged balloon of my "No. 5," and in acknow- 
ledgment of the work I had done in 1900, the 
Scientific Commission of the Paris Aero Club 
had awarded me its Encouragement Prize, 
founded by M. Deutsch (de la Meurthe), and 
consisting of the yearly interest on one hun- 
dred thousand francs. To induce others to 
follow up the difficult and expensive problem 
of dirigible ballooning, I left this four thou- 
sand francs at the disposition of the Aero 
Club to found a new prize. I made the condi- 
tions of winning it very simple : 

" The Santos-Dumont Prize shall be 
awarded to the aeronaut, a member of the 
Paris Aero Club and not the founder of this 
prize, who, between May 1 and October 1, 
1 90 1, starting from the Pare d' Aerostation of 
Saint Cloud, shall turn around the Eififel 
Tower and come back to the starting-point, 
at the end of whatever time, without having 
touched ground and by his self-contained 
means on board alone. 

" If the Santos-Dumont Prize is not won in 



THE EXPOSITION SUMMER 155 

1 90 1, it shall remain open the following year, 
always from May 1 to October 1, and so on 
until it be won.'' 

The Aero Club signified the importance of 
such a trial by deciding to give its highest re- 
ward—a gold medal — to the winner of the 
Santos-Dumont Prize, as may be seen by its 
minutes of the time. Since then the four thou- 
sand francs remain always in the treasury of 
the club. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE DEUTSCH PRIZE AND ITS PROBLEMS 

THIS brings me to the Deutsch Prize for 
aerial navigation, offered in the spring 
of 1900 while I was navigating my " No. 3," 
and after I had, on at least one occasion — all 
unknowing— steered over what was to be its 
exact course from the Eiffel Tower to the 
Seine at Bagatelle. 

This prize of one hundred thousand francs, 
founded by M. Deutsch (de la Meurthe), a 
member of the Paris Aero Club, was to be 
awarded by the Scientific Commission of that 
organization to the first dirigible balloon or 
air-ship that, between May 1 and October 1, 
1900, 1 90 1, 1902, 1903, and 1904, should rise 
from the Pare d' Aerostation of the Aero Club 
at Saint Cloud and, without touching ground 
and by its own self-contained means on board 

alone, describe a closed curve in such a way 

156 



&&*■.■& 

"No. 4" 



THE DEUTSCH PRIZE 159 

that the axis of the Eiffel Tower should be 
within the interior of the circuit, and return to 
the point of departure in the maximum time 
of half an hour. Should more than one ac- 
complish the task in the same year, the one 
hundred thousand francs were to be divided in 
proportion to their respective times. 

The Aero Club's Scientific Commission had 
been named expressly for the purpose of for- 
mulating these and such other conditions of 
the foundation as it might deem proper; and 
by reason of certain of them I had made no at- 
tempt to win the prize w r ith my " Santos- 
Dumont No. 4." The course from the Aero 
Club's Pare d' Aerostation to the Eiffel Tower 
and return was nearly seven miles; and this 
distance plus the turning around the tower 
must be accomplished in thirty minutes. This 
meant in a perfect calm a necessary speed of 
fifteen and a half miles per hour for the 
straight stretches — a speed I could not be sure 
to maintain all the way in my " No. 4." 

Another condition formulated by the Scien- 
tific Commission was that its members — who 
were to be the judges of all trials — must be 



160 MY AIR-SHIPS 

notified twenty-four hours in advance of each 
attempt. Naturally the operation of such a 
condition would be to nullify as much as pos- 
sible all minute time calculations based either 
on a given rate of speed through perfect calm 
or such air-current as might be prevailing 
twenty-four hours previous to the hour of 
trial. Though Paris is situated in a basin, 
surrounded on all sides by hills, its air-cur- 
rents are peculiarly variable; and brusk me- 
teorological changes are extremely common. 
I foresaw, also, that when a competitor had 
once committed the formal act of assembling 
a scientific commission on a slope of the river 
Seine so far away from Paris as Saint Cloud, 
he would be under a kind of moral pressure to 
go on with his trial, no matter how the air- 
currents might have increased, and no matter 
in what kind of weather — wet, dry, or simply 
humid — he might find himself. 

Again, this moral pressure to go on with the 
trial against the aeronaut's better judgment 
must extend even to the event of an unlucky 
change in the state of the air-ship itself. One 
does not convoke a body of prominent per- 



THE DEUTSCH PRIZE 161 

sonages to a distant riverside for nothing; yet 
in the twenty-four hours between notification 
and trial even a well-watched elongated bal- 
loon might well lose a little of its tautness un- 
perceived. A previous day's preliminary trial 
might easily derange so uncertain an engine 
as the petroleum-motor of the year 1900. 
And, finally, I saw that the competitor would 
be barred by common courtesy from convok- 
ing the commission at the very hour most fa- 
vorable for dirigible-balloon experiments over 
Paris — the calm of the dawn. The duelist 
may call out his friends at that sacred hour, 
but not the air-ship captain ! 

In founding the Santos-Dumont Prize with 
the four thousand francs awarded to me by the 
Aero Club for my work in the year 1900, it 
will be observed that I made no such condi- 
tions by the way. I did not wish to complicate 
the trial by imposing a minimum velocity, the 
check of a special committee, or any limitation 
of time of trial during the day. I was sure 
that even under the widest conditions it would 
be a great deal to come back to the starting- 
point after having reached a post publicly 



i6 2 MY AIR-SHIPS 

pointed out in advance— -a thing that was un- 
heard of before the year 1901. 

The conditions of the Santos-Dumont Prize, 
therefore, left competitors free to choose the 
state of the air least unfavorable to them, as 
the calm of late evening or early morning. 
Nor would I inflict on them the possible sur- 
prises of a period of waiting between the con- 
vocation and the meeting of a scientific com- 
mission, itself, in my eyes, quite unnecessary 
in these days when the army of newspaper re- 
porters of a great capital is always ready to 
mobilize without notice, at any hour and spot, 
on the bare prospect of news. The newspaper 
men of Paris would be my scientific commis- 
sion. 

As I had excluded myself from trying for 
the Santos-Dumont Prize, I naturally wished 
to show that it would not be impossible to ful- 
fil its conditions. My " No. 5 "—composed of 
the enlarged balloon of the " No. 4 " and the 
new keel, motor, and propeller already de- 
scribed—was now ready for trial. In it, on 
the first attempt, I fulfilled the conditions of 
my own prize foundation. 



THE DEUTSCH PRIZE 165 

This was on July 12, 1901, after a practice- 
flight the day before. At 4.30 a.m. I steered 
my air-ship from the park of the Aero Club 
at Saint Cloud to the Longchamps race- 
course. I did not at that moment take time to 
ask permission of the Jockey Club, which, 
however, a few days later, placed that admir- 
able open space at my disposition. Ten times 
in succession I made the circuit of Long- 
champs, stopping each time at a point de- 
signed beforehand. 

After these first evolutions, which alto- 
gether made up a distance of twenty-two 
miles, I set out for Puteaux; and after an ex- 
cursion of nearly two miles, done in nine min- 
utes, I steered back again to Longchamps. 

I was by this time so well satisfied with the 
dirigibility of my " No. 5 " that I began look- 
ing for the Eiffel Tower. It had disappeared 
in the mists of the morning; but its direction 
was well known to me; so I steered for it as 
well as I might. 

In ten minutes I had come within 40 rods 

of the Champ de Mars. At this moment one 

of the cords managing my rudder broke. It 
9 



1 66 MY AIR-SHIPS 

was absolutely necessary to repair it at once; 
and to repair it, I must descend to earth. 
With perfect ease I pulled forward the guide- 
rope, shifted my center of gravity, and drove 
the air-ship diagonally downward, landing 
gently in the Trocadero Gardens. Good- 
natured workmen ran to me from all direc- 
tions. 

Did I need anything? they asked. 

Yes, I needed a ladder. And in less time 
than it takes to write it, a ladder was found 
and placed in position. While two held it, I 
climbed some twenty rounds to its top and was 
able to repair the damaged rudder-connection. 

I started off again, mounting diagonally to 
my chosen altitude, turned the Eiffel Tower 
in a wide curve, and returned to Longchamps 
in a straight course, after a trip, including 
the stop for repairs, of one hour and six 
minutes. Then, after a few minutes' conver- 
sation, I took my flight back to the Saint 
Cloud aerodrome, passing the Seine at an 
altitude of over 600 feet, and housing the still 
perfectly inflated air-ship in its shed as though 
it were a simple automobile. 



p 




CHAPTER XIII 

A FALL BEFORE A RISE 

MY " No. 5 " had proved itself so much 
more powerful than its predecessors 
that I now found courage to inscribe myself 
for the Deutsch Prize competition. 

Having taken this decisive step, I at once 
convoked the Scientific Commission of the 
Aero Club for a trial, in accordance with the 
regulations. 

The commission assembled in the grounds 
of the Aero Club at Saint Cloud on July 13, 
1901, at 6.30 a.m. At 6.41 I started off. I 
turned the Eiffel Tower in the tenth minute, 
and came back against an unexpected head- 
wind, reaching the time-keepers at Saint 
Cloud in the fortieth minute, at an altitude of 
200 meters and after a terrific struggle with 
the element. 

Just at this moment my capricious motor 

169 



i7? MY AIR-SHIPS 

stopped; and the air-ship, bereft of its power, 
drifted until it fell on the tallest chestnut-tree 
in the park of M. Edmond de Rothschild. The 
inhabitants and servants of the villa, who 
came running, very naturally imagined that 
the air-ship must be wrecked and myself prob- 
ably hurt. They were astonished to find me 
standing in my basket high up in the tree, 
while the propeller touched the ground. Con- 
sidering the force with which the wind had 
blown when I was battling with it on the 
home-stretch, I myself was surprised to note 
how little the balloon was torn. Nevertheless, 
all its gas had left it. 

This happened very near the house of the 
Princess Isabel, Comtesse d'Eu, who, hearing 
of my plight, and learning that I must be oc- 
cupied some time in disengaging the air-ship, 
sent a lunch to me up in my tree, with an invi- 
tation to come and tell her the story of my 
trip. When the story was finished, the daugh- 
ter of Dom Pedro said to me : 

" Your evolutions in the air make me think 
of the flight of our great birds of Brazil. I 
hope that you will do as well with your pro- 




Accident in Park ef M. Edmond Rothschild 



A FALL BEFORE A RISE 173 

peller as they do with their wings, and that 
you w T ill succeed for the glory of our common 
country! " 

A few days later I received the following 
letter : 

" August 1, 1 90 1. 
" Monsieur Santos-Dumont : 

" Here is a medal of St. Benedict that pro- 
tects against accidents. 

" Accept it and wear it, at your watch- 
chain, in your card-case, or at your neck. 

" I send it to you, thinking of your good 
mother^ and praying God to help you always 
and to make you work for the glory of our 
country. 

(Signed) "Isabel, Comtesse d'Eu." 

As the newspapers have often spoken of 
my " bracelet/' I may say that the thin gold 
chain of which it consists is simply the means 
I have taken to wear this medal, which I prize. 

The air-ship, as a whole, was damaged very 
little, considering the force of the wind and 
the nature of the accident. When it was ready 
to be taken out again I therefore thought it 



i 7 4 MY AIR-SHIPS 

prudent to make several trials with it over the 
grassy lawn of the Longchamps race-course. 
One of these trials I will mention, because it 
gave me— something rare— a fairly accurate 
idea of the air-ship's speed in perfect calm. 
On this occasion Mr. Maurice Farman fol- 
lowed me around the race-course in his auto- 
mobile, at its second speed. His estimate was 
between twenty-six and sixteen and eighteen 
and a half miles per hour, with my guide-rope 
dragging. Of course, when the guide-rope 
drags, it acts exactly like a brake. How much 
it holds one back depends upon the length that 
actually drags along the ground. Our calcu- 
lation at the time was about three miles per 
hour, which would have brought my proper 
speed up to between eighteen and a half and 
twenty-one and a half miles per hour. All this 
encouraged me to make another trial for the 
Deutsch Prize. 

And now I come to a terrible day— August 
8, 1901. At 6.30 a.m., in presence of the Sci- 
entific Commission of the Aero Club, I started 
again for the Eififel Tower. 

I turned the tower at the end of nine min- 



-SV'i/ l\ ^^..'■■■ :; Z 




o 



< 

I 



o 



A FALL BEFORE A RISE 177 

utes and took my way back to Saint Cloud; 
but my balloon was losing hydrogen through 
one of its two automatic gas-valves, whose 
spring had been accidentally weakened. 

I had perceived the beginning of this loss 
of gas even before reaching the Eiffel Tower, 
and ordinarily, in such an event, I should have 
come at once to earth to examine the lesion. 
But here I was competing for a prize of great 
honor and my speed had been good. There- 
fore I risked going on. 

The balloon shrank visibly. By the time I 
had reached the fortifications of Paris near La 
Muette, it caused the suspension wires to sag 
so much that those nearest to the screw-pro- 
peller caught in it as it revolved. 

I saw the propeller cutting and tearing at 
the wires. I stopped the motor instantly. 
Then, as a consequence, the air-ship was at 
once driven back toward the tower by the 
wind, which was strong. 

At the same time I was falling. The bal- 
loon had lost much gas. I might have thrown 
out ballast and greatly diminished the fall ; but 
then the wind would have time to blow me 



1 78 MY AIR-SHIPS 

back on the Eiffel Tower. I therefore pre- 
ferred to let the air-ship go down as it was 
going: it may have seemed a terrific fall to 
those who watched it from the ground, but to 
me the worst detail was the air-ship's lack of 
equilibrium. The half-empty balloon, flutter- 
ing its empty end as an elephant waves his 
trunk, caused the air-ship's stem to point 
upward at an alarming angle. What I most 
feared, therefore, was that the unequal strain 
on the suspension wires would break them 
one by one and so precipitate me to the 
ground. 

Why was the balloon fluttering an empty 
end and causing all this extra danger ? How 
was it that the rotary ventilator was not ful- 
filling its purpose in feeding the interior air- 
balloon and in this manner swelling out the 
gas-balloon around it? The answer must be 
looked for in the nature of the accident. The 
rotary ventilator stopped working when the 
motor itself stopped; and I had been obliged 
to stop the motor to prevent it from tearing 
the suspension wires near it when the balloon 
first began to sag from loss of gas. It is true 



A FALL BEFORE A RISE 181 

that the ventilator, which was working at that 
moment, had not proved sufficient to prevent 
the first sagging. It may have been that the 
interior air-balloon refused to fill out properly. 
The day after the accident, when my balloon- 
constructor's man came to me for the plans of 
a " No. 6 " balloon-envelop, I gathered from 
something he said that the interior air-balloon 
of the " No. 5," not having been given time 
for its varnish to dry before being adjusted, 
might have stuck together or stuck to the sides 
or bottom of the outer balloon. Such are the 
rewards of haste! 

I was falling. At the same time the wind 
was carrying me toward the Eiffel Tower. It 
had already carried me so far that I was ex- 
pecting to land on the Seine embankment be- 
yond the Trocadero. My basket and the 
whole of the keel had already passed the Tro- 
cadero hotels; and, had my balloon been a 
spherical one, it too would have cleared the 
buildings. But now, at the last critical mo- 
ment, the end of the long balloon that was still 
full of gas came slapping down on the roof 
just before clearing it! It exploded with a 



182 MY AIR-SHIPS 

great noise— exactly like a paper bag struck 
after being blown up. This was the " terrific 
explosion " described in the newspapers of the 
day. 

I had made a mistake in my estimate of the 
wind's force, by a few yards. Instead of being 
carried on to fall on the Seine embankment, I 
now found myself hanging in my wicker 
basket high up in the courtyard of the Troca- 
dero hotels, supported by my air-ship's keel, 
that stood braced at an angle of about forty- 
five degrees between the courtyard wall above 
and the roof of a lower construction farther 
down. The keel, in spite of my weight, that 
of the motor and machinery, and the shock it 
had received in falling, resisted wonderfully. 
The thin pine scantlings and piano-wires of 
Nice had saved my life ! 

After what seemed tedious waiting, I saw a 
rope being lowered to me from the roof above. 
I held to it and was hauled up, when I per- 
ceived my rescuers ft be the brave firemen of 
Paris. From their station at Passy they had 
been watching the flight of the air-ship. They 
had seen my fall and immediately hastened to 




Accident at the Trocadero Hotels just before the Rescue by the Firemen 



A FALL BEFORE A RISE 185 

the spot. Then, having rescued me, they pro- 
ceeded to rescue the air-ship. 

The operation was painful. The remains 
of the balloon-envelop and the suspension 
wires hung lamentably; and it was impossible 
to disengage them except in strips and frag- 
ments ! 

So I escaped ; and my escape may have been 
narrow. But it was not from the particular 
danger always present in my mind during this 
period of trials around the Eiffel Tower. A 
Parisian journalist said that, had the Eiffel 
Tower not existed, it would have been neces- 
sary to invent it for the needs of aerostation. 
It is true that the engineers who remain at its 
summit have at their hands all necessary in- 
struments for observing aerial and meteoro- 
logical conditions ; their chronometers are ex- 
act; and, as Professor Langley has said in a 
communication to the Louisiana Purchase Ex- 
position Committee, the position of the tower 
as a central landmark, visible to every one 
from considerable distances, made it a unique 
winning-post for an aerial contest. I myself 
had circled around it at a respectful distance, 



186 MY AIR-SHIPS 

of my own free will, in 1899, before the stipu- 
lation of the Deutsch Prize competition was 
dreamed of. Yet none of these considerations 
altered the other fact that the necessity to 
round the Eiffel Tower attached a unique ele- 
ment of danger to the task. 

What I feared was that, in my eagerness to 
make a quick turning, by some error in steer- 
ing, or by the influence of some unexpected 
side-wind, I might be dashed against the 
tower. The impact would certainly burst my 
balloon, and I should fall to the ground like a 
stone. Nor could the utmost prudence and 
self-control in making a wide turn guarantee 
me against the danger. Should my capricious 
motor stop as I approached the tower,— ex- 
actly as it stopped after I had passed over the 
time-keepers' heads at Saint Cloud returning 
from my first trial on July 13, 1901, — I would 
be powerless to hold the air-ship back. 

Therefore I always dreaded the turn around 
the Eiffel Tower, looking on it as my principal 
danger. While never seeking to go high in 
my air-ships, — on the contrary, I hold the rec- 
ord for low altitude in a free balloon, — in pass- 




d 


o 



u 



bJ9 



y, 



A FALL BEFORE A RISE i$g 

ing over Paris I must necessarily move above 
and out of the way of its chimney-pots and 
steeples. The Eiffel Tower was my one dan- 
ger ; yet it was my winning-post ! 

Such were my fears while on the ground; 
while in the air I had no time for fear. I have- 
always kept a cool head. Alone in the air- 
ship, I am always busy, for there is more than 
enough work for one man. Like the captain 
of a yacht, I must not let go the rudder for an 
instant. Like its chief engineer, I must watch 
the motor. The balloon's rigidity of form 
must be preserved. And with this capital de- 
tail is connected the whole complex problem 
of the air-ship's altitude, the maneuvering of 
guide-rope and shifting-weights, the econo- 
mizing of ballast, and the surveillance of the 
air-pump attached to the motor. Besides 
this, there is the joy of commanding rapid 
movement. The pleasurable sensations experi- 
enced in my first air-ships were intensified in 
the powerful " No. 5." As M. Jaures has put 
it, I now felt myself a man in the air, com- 
manding movement. In spherical balloons I 
had felt myself to be only the shadow of a man ! 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE BUILDING OF MY " NO. 6 " 

ON the very evening of my fall to the roof 
of the Trocadero hotels, I gave out the 
specifications of a " Santos-Dumont No. 6 " ; 
and after twenty-two days of continuous 
labor, it was finished and inflated. 

The new balloon had the shape of an elon- 
gated ellipsoid (Figure 9), no feet by its 
great axis and 20 feet by its small axis, ter- 
minated fore and aft by cones. 




— o— 

Air-valve 




Fig. 9. 
190 



» 




No. 6" — Return from the Eiffel Tower 



THE BUILDING OF MY "NO. 6" 193 

I now gave greater care than ever to the 
devices on which I depended to maintain the 
balloon's rigidity of form. I had fallen to the 
roof of the Trocadero hotels by the fault of 
the smallest and most insignificant-looking 
piece of mechanism of the entire system — a 
weakened valve that let out the balloon's hy- 
drogen. In very much the same way, the fall 
of the first of all my air-ships had been occa- 
sioned by the failure of a little air-pump ! 

In all my constructions, except the big- 
bellied balloon of the " No. 3," I had depended 
much on the interior compensating air-balloon 
(Figure 5, page 129) fed by air-pump or ro- 
tary ventilator. Sewed like a closed patch- 
pocket to the bottom of the great balloon in- 
side it, this compensating air-balloon would 
remain flat and empty so long as the great bal- 
loon remained distended with its gas. Then, 
as hydrogen might be condensed from time to 
time by changes of altitude and temperature, 
the air-pump or ventilator worked by the mo- 
tor would begin to fill the compensating air- 
balloon, make it take up more room inside the 
great balloon, and so keep it distended. 



i 9 4 MY AIR-SHIPS 

Inside the balloon of my " No. 6 " I now 
sewed such a compensating balloon capable of 
holding 21 1 8 cubic feet. The ventilator that 
was to feed it formed practically a part of the 
motor itself. In constant revolution while the 
motor worked, it would serve air continuously 
to the compensating balloon, whether or not 
the latter would be able to hold it. What air 
it could not hold would escape through a com- 
paratively weak valve (" Air- Valve," Figure 
9) communicating with the outer atmosphere 
through the bottom of the air-balloon— which 
was also the bottom of the great outer balloon. 

To relieve the great balloon of its dilated 
hydrogen when necessary, I supplied it with 
two of the best valves I could make. (" Gas- 
Valves," Figure 9.) These also communi- 
cated with the outer atmosphere. Imagine, 
now, that after a certain condensation of my 
hydrogen, the interior compensating balloon 
should have filled up in part with air from the 
ventilator and so maintained the form of the 
great balloon rigid. Shortly after, by a 
change of temperature or altitude, the hydro- 
gen would begin to dilate again. Something 



i§. 




No. 6 "—First trip 



THE BUILDING OF MY " NO. 6 " 197 

would have to give way, or the balloon would 
burst in a " cold explosion/' What ought to 
give way first? Evidently, the weaker air- 
valve (" Air-Valve," Figure 9). Letting out 
part or all of the air in the interior balloon, it 
would relieve the tension of the swelling hy- 
drogen. And only after, were ,this not suffi- 
cient, would the stronger gas-valves (Figure 
9) let out precious hydrogen. 

All three valves were automatic, opening 
outward on a given pressure from within. 
One of the hypotheses to account for the 
terrible accident to the unhappy Severo's di- 
rigible " Pax " * is concerned with this all- 
important problem of valves. The " Pax," as 
originally constructed, had two. M. Severo, 
who was not a practical aeronaut, stopped up 
one of them with wax before starting on his 
first and last voyage. In view of the decreasing 
pressure of the atmosphere as one goes higher, 

1 In the early morning of May 12, 1902, M. Auguste Severo, ac- 
companied by his mechanician, Sachet, started from Paris on a first 
trial with the '* Pax," the invention and construction of M. Severo. 
The ''Pax," rose at once to a height almost double that of the Eiffel 
Tower, when, for reasons not precisely known, it exploded and came 
crashing to earth with its two passengers. The fall took eight 
seconds to accomplish ; and the luckless experimenters were picked 
up broken and shapeless masses. 
10 



198 MY AIR-SHIPS 

the ascent of a dirigible should always be slow 
and never great; for gas will expand on the 
rise of a few yards. It is quite different from 
the case of the spherical balloon, which has no 
interior pressure to withstand. A dirigible, 
whose envelop is distended by great pressure, 
depends on its valves not to burst. With one 
of its valves stopped with wax, the " Pax " 
was allowed to shoot up from the earth, and 
immediately its occupants seem to have lost 
their heads. Instead of checking their rapid 
rise, one of them threw out ballast — a handful 
of which will send up a great spherical balloon 
perceptibly! The mechanician of Severo is 
said to have been last seen throwing out a 
whole bag in his excitement. Up shot the 
" Pax " higher and higher : and the expan- 
sion, the explosion, and the awful fall came as 
a chain of consequences. 

The tonnage of the new balloon was 22,239 
cubic feet, affording an absolute lifting-power 
of 1 5 18 pounds; but the increased weight of 
the new motor and machinery nevertheless 
put my disposable ballast at 242 pounds. It 
was a four-cylinder motor of 12 horse-power, 




PQ 






o 



THE BUILDING OF MY " NO. 6" 201 

cooled automatically by the circulation of 
water round the top of the piston (culasse). 
While the water-cooler brought extra weight, 
I was glad to have it; for the arrangement 
would permit me to utilize, without fear of 
overheating or jamming en route, the full 
power of the motor, which was : able to com- 
municate to the propeller a traction-effort of 
145 pounds. 

My daily practice with the new air-ship 
ended on September 6, 1901, in a slight acci- 
dent. The balloon was reinflated by Septem- 
ber 1 5 ; but four days later it crashed against 
a tree in making a too sudden turn. Such ac- 
cidents I have always taken philosophically, 
looking on them as a kind of insurance against 
more terrible ones. Were I to give a single 
word of caution to all dirigible balloonists, it 
would be, " Keep close to earth ! " 

The place of the air-ship is not in high alti- 
tudes; and it is better to catch in the tops of 
trees, as I used to do in the Bois de Boulogne, 
than to risk the perils of the upper air without 
the slightest practical advantage ! 



CHAPTER XV 

WINNING THE DEUTSCH PRIZE 

AND now, on October 19, 1901, the air- 
il ship " Santos-Dumont No. 6 " having 
been repaired with great celerity, I tried again 
for theDeutsch Prize— and won it. 

The day before, the weather had been 
wretched. Nevertheless I had sent out the 
necessary telegrams convoking the commis- 
sion. Through the night the weather had 
improved; but the atmospheric conditions at 
two o'clock in the afternoon — the hour an- 
nounced for the trial — were nevertheless so 
unfavorable that, of the twenty-five members 
composing the commission, only five made 
their appearance: MM. Deutsch (de la 
Meurthe), de Dion, Fonvielle, Besangon, and 
Aime. 

The Central Meteorological Bureau, con- 
sulted at this hour by telephone, reported a 







Scientific Commission of Aero Ciub observing winning of Deutsch Prize 

Left, M. Wilfrid de Fonvielle, organizer of balloon service during siege of Paris, 1870; 
next him is Marquis de Dion ; third is Georges Besancon, secretary of Aero Club 



WINNING THE DEUTSCH PRIZE 205 

southeast wind blowing six meters per second 
at the altitude of the Eiffel Tower. When I 
consider that I was content when my first air- 
ship, in 1898. had, in my opinion of myself and 
friends, been going at the rate of seven meters 
per second, I am still surprised at the prog- 
ress realized in those three years; for I was 
now setting out to win a race against a 
time limit in a wind blowing almost as fast 
as the highest speed I had realized in my first 
air-ship ! 

The official start took place at 2.42 p.m. In 
spite of the wind striking me sidewise, with a 
tendency to take me to the left of the Eiffel 
Tower, I held my course straight to that goal. 
Gradually I drove the air-ship onward and up- 
ward to a height of about ten meters above its 
summit. In doing this I lost some time, but 
secured myself against accidental contact with 
the tower as much as possible. 

As I passed the tower, I turned with a sud- 
den movement of the rudder, bringing the air- 
ship round the tower's lightning-conductor at 
a distance of about fifty meters from it. The 
tower was thus turned at 2.51 p.m., the dis- 



2o6 MY AIR-SHIPS 

tance of $y 2 kilometers plus the turning being 
done in nine minutes. 

The return trip was longer, being in the 
teeth of this same wind. Also, during the 
trip to the tower the motor had worked fairly 
well. Now, after I had left it some five hun- 
dred meters behind me, the motor was actually 
on the point of stopping ! I had a moment of 
great uncertainty. I must make a quick de- 
cision. It was to abandon the steering-wheel 
for a moment, at the risk of drifting from my 
course, in order to devote my attention to the 
carbureting lever and the lever controlling the 
electric spark. 

The motor, which had almost stopped, be- 
gan to work again. I had now reached the 
Bois, where, by a phenomenon known to all 
aeronauts, the cool air from the trees began 
making my balloon heavier and heavier — or, 
in true physics, smaller by condensation — all 
the time. By an unlucky coincidence, the 
motor at this moment began slowing again. 
Thus the air-ship was descending, while its 
motive power was decreasing ! 

To correct the descent, I had to throw back 



* 




The Start — Deutsch Prize 



WINNING THE DEUTSCH PRIZE 209 

both guide-rope and shifting-weights. This 
caused the air-ship to point diagonally up- 
ward, so that what propeller-force remained 
caused it to remount continually in the air. 

I was now over the crowd of the Auteuil 
race-track, already with a sharp pointing up- 
ward. I heard the applause of the mighty 
throng, when, suddenly, my capricious motor 
started working at full speed again. The 
suddenly accelerated propeller being almost 
under the high-pointed air-ship, exaggerated 
the inclination, so that the applause of the 
crowd changed to cries of alarm. As for my- 
self, I had no fear, being over the trees of the 
Bois, whose soft greenery, as I have already 
stated, always reassured me. 

All this happened very quickly, before I had 
a chance to shift my weights and guide-rope 
back to the normal horizontal positions. I 
was now at an altitude of one hundred and 
fifty meters. Of course I might have checked 
the diagonal mounting of the air-ship by the 
simple means of slowing the motor that was 
driving it upward; but I was racing against 
a time limit, and so I just went on. 



2io MY AIR-SHIPS 

I soon righted myself by shifting the guide- 
rope and the weights forward. I mention this 
in detail because at the time many of my 
friends imagined something terrible was hap- 
pening. All the same, I did not have time to 
bring the air-ship to a lower altitude before 
reaching the timekeepers in the Aero Club's 
grounds— a thing I might easily have done by 
slowing the motor. This is why I passed so 
high over the judges' heads. 

On my way to the tower I never looked 
down on the housetops of Paris. I navigated 
in a sea of white and azure, seeing nothing but 
the goal. On the return trip I had kept my 
eyes fixed on the verdure of the Bois de Bou- 
logne and the silver streak of river where I 
had to cross it. Now, at my high altitude of 
one hundred and fifty meters and with the pro- 
peller working at full power, I passed above 
Longchamps, crossed the Seine, and continued 
on at full speed over the heads of the commis- 
sion and the spectators gathered in the Aero 
Club's grounds. At that moment it was 
eleven minutes and thirty seconds past three 
o'clock — making the time exactly twenty-nine 
minutes and thirty seconds. 



WINNING THE DEUTSCH PRIZE 213 

The air-ship, carried by the impetus of its 
great speed, passed on, as a race-horse passes 
the winning-post, as a sailing-yacht passes the 
winning-line, as a road-racing automobile 
continues flying past the judges who have 
snapped its time. Like the jockey of the race- 
horse, I then turned and drove myself back to 
the aerodrome, to have my guide-rope caught 
and be drawn down at twelve minutes forty 
and four-fifths seconds past three, or thirty 
minutes and forty-one seconds from the start. 

I did not yet know my exact time. 

I cried : 

"Havel won?" 

And the crowd of spectators cried back to 
me: 

"Yes!" 

For a while there were those who argued 
that my time ought to be calculated up to the 
moment of my second return to the aero- 
drome, instead of to the moment when I first 
passed over it returning from the Eiffel 
Tower. For a while, indeed, it seemed that it 
might be more difficult to have the prize 
awarded to me than it had been to win it. In 



2i 4 MY AIR-SHIPS 

the end, however, common sense prevailed. 
The money of the prize, amounting in all to 
one hundred and twenty-five thousand francs, 
I did not desire to keep. I therefore divided it 
into unequal parts. The greater sum, of sev- 
enty-five thousand francs, I handed over to 
the prefect of police of Paris, to be used for 
the deserving poor. The balance I distributed 
among my employees, who had been so long 
with me and to whose devotion I was glad to 
pay this tribute. 

At this same time, I received another grand 
prize, as gratifying as it was unexpected. 
This was a sum of one hundred contos (one 
hundred and twenty-five thousand francs) 
voted to me by the government of my own 
country and accompanied by a gold medal of 
large size and great beauty, designed, en- 
graved, and struck off in Brazil. Its obverse 
shows my humble self, led by Victory and 
crowned with laurel by a flying figure of Re- 
nown. Above a rising sun there is engraved 
the line of Camoens, altered by one word, as I 
adopted it to float on the long streamer of my 
air-ship: " Por ceos nunca d'antes navega- 



WINNING THE DEUTSCH PRIZE 217 

dos ! " * The reverse bears these words : 
" Being President of the Republic of the 
United States of Brazil, the Doctor Manoel 
Ferraz de Campos Salles has given order to 
engrave and strike this medal in homage to 
Alberto Santos-Dumont, 19 October, iqoi." 

1 " Through heavens heretofore unsailed "—instead of : Por mares 
nunca d' antes navegados (" O'er seas heretofore unsailed "). 



CHAPTER XVI 

A GLANCE BACKWARD AND FORWARD 

JUST as I had not gone into air-ship con- 
structing for the sake of winning the 
Deutsch Prize, so now I had no reason to stop 
experimenting after I had won it. When I 
built and navigated my first air-ships, neither 
Aero Club nor Deutsch Prize was yet in ex- 
istence. The two, by their rapid rise and de- 
served prominence, had brought the problem 
of aerial navigation suddenly before the pub- 
lic — so suddenly, indeed, that I was really not 
prepared to enter into such a race with a time 
limit. Naturally anxious to have the honor of 
winning such a competition, I had been forced 
on rapidly in new constructions at both danger 
and expense. Now I would take time to per- 
fect myself systematically as an aerial navi- 
gator. . 

Suppose you buy a new bicycle or automo- 
218 








" No. 6 " winning the Deutsch Prize 
Two negatives on one plate by turning. (Taken at 2.51 p. M., October 19, 1901.) 



A GLANCE BACKWARD 221 

bile. You will have a perfect machine to your 
hand, without having had any of the labor, the 
deceptions, the false starts and recommence- 
ments of the inventor and constructor. Yet 
with all these advantages you will soon find 
that possession of the perfected machine does 
not necessarily mean that you shall go spin- 
ning over the highways with it. You may be 
so unpractised that you will fall off the bicycle 
or blow up the automobile. The machine is all 
right ; but you must learn to run it. 

To bring the modern bicycle to its perfec- 
tion, thousands of amateurs, inventors, engi- 
neers, and constructors labored during more 
than twenty-five years, trying endless innova- 
tions, one by one rejecting the great mass of 
them and, after endless failures by the way 
of half-successes, slowly nearing to the per- 
fect organism. 

So it is to-day with the automobile. Im- 
agine the united labors and financial sacrifices 
of the engineers and manufacturers that led, 
step by step, up to the road-racing automobiles 
of the Paris-Berlin Competition in 1901 — the 
year in which the only working dirigible bal- 



222 MY AIR-SHIPS 

loon then in existence won the Deutsch Prize 
against a time limit that was thought by many 
a complete bar to success. Yet of the one hun- 
dred and seventy perfected automobiles regis- 
tered for entry to the Paris-Berlin Competi- 
tion, only one hundred and nine completed the 
first day's run; and of these only twenty-six 
finally reached Berlin ! 

Out of one hundred and seventy automo- 
biles entered for the race, only twenty-six 
reached the goal! And of these twenty-six 
arriving at Berlin, how many do you imagine 
made the trip without serious accident ? Per- 
haps none ! 

It is perfectly natural that this should be so. 
People think nothing of it. Such is the nat- 
ural development of a great invention. But 
if I break down while in the air, I cannot stop 
for repairs; I must go on, and the whole 
world knows it ! 

Looking back, therefore, on my progress 
since the time I doubled up above the Bagatelle 
grounds in 1898, I was surprised at the rapid 
pace at which I had allowed the notice of the 
world and my own ardor to push me on in 



A GLANCE BACKWARD 225 

what was in reality an arbitrary task. At the 
risk of my neck and the needless sacrifice of a 
great deal of money, I had won the Deutsch 
Prize. I might have arrived at the same point 
of progress by less forced and more reason- 
able stages. Throughout I had been inventor, 
patron, manufacturer, amateur, mechanician, 
and air-ship captain, all united ! Yet any one 
of these qualities is thought to bring sufficient 
work and credit to the individual in the world 
of automobiles. 

With all these cares I often found myself 
criticized for choosing calm days for my ex- 
periments. Yet who, experimenting over 
Paris,— as I had to do when trying for the 
Deutsch Prize, — would add to his natural 
risks and expenses the vexations of who 
knows what prosecutions for knocking down 
the chimney-pots of a great capital on the 
heads of a population of pedestrians? 

One by one I tried the assurance compa- 
nies. None would make a rate for me against 
the damage I might do on a squally day. 
None would give me a rate on my own air- 
ship to insure it against destruction. 



226 MY AIR-SHIPS 

To me it was now clear that what I most 
needed was navigation practice pure and sim- 
ple. I had been increasing the speed of my 
air-ships — that is to say, I had been construct- 
ing — at the expense of my education as an air- 
ship captain. 

The captain of a steamboat obtains his cer- 
tificate only after years of study and experi- 
ence of navigation in inferior capacities. 
Even the chauffeur on the public highway 
must pass his examination before the authori- 
ties will give him his papers. 

In the air, where all is new, the routine 
navigation of a dirigible balloon, requiring 
for foundation the united experiences of the 
spherical balloonist and the automobile chauf- 
feur, makes demands upon the lone captain's 
coolness, ingenuity, quick reasoning, and a 
kind of instinct that comes with long habit. 

Urged on by these considerations, my great 
object in the autumn of 1901 was to find a fa- 
vorable place for practice in aerial navigation. 

My swiftest and best air-ship—" Santos- 
Dumont No. 6 "—was in perfect condition. 
The day after winning the Deutsch Prize in 




u 



u 

o 



o 



A GLANCE BACKWARD 229 

it, my chief mechanician asked me if he should 
tighten it up with hydrogen. I told him yes. 
Then, seeking to let some more hydrogen into 
it, he discovered something curious. The bal- 
loon would not take any more ! It had not lost 
a single cubic unit of hydrogen. 

The winning of the Deutsch Prize had cost 
only a few liters of petroleum ! 

Just as the Paris winter of biting winds, 
cold rains, and lowering skies was approach- 
ing, T received an intimation that the Prince 
of Monaco, himself a man of science cele- 
brated for his personal investigations, would 
be pleased to build a balloon-house directly on 
the beach of La Condamine, from which I 
might dart out on the Mediterranean and so 
continue my aerial practice through the win- 
ter. 

The situation promised to be ideal. The 
little Bay of Monaco, sheltered from behind 
against the wind and cold by mountains, and 
from the wind and sea on either side by the 
heights of Monte Carlo and Monaco town, 
would make a well-protected manoeuver- 

ground. 

11 



2 3 o MY AIR-SHIPS 

The air-ship would be always ready, filled 
with hydrogen gas. It could slip out of the 
balloon-house to profit by good weather, and 
back again for shelter at the approach of 
squalls. The balloon-house would be erected 
on the edge of the shore, and the whole Medi- 
terranean would lie before me for guide- 
roping. 







esJ 

d 
o 
U 



CHAPTER XVII 

MONACO AND THE MARITIME GUIDE-ROPE 

WHEN I arrived at Monte Carlo, in the 
latter part of January, 1902, the bal- 
loon-house of the Prince of Monaco was al- 
ready practically completed, from suggestions 
I had given. 

The new aerodrome rose on the Boulevard 
de la Condamine, just across the electric tram- 
car tracks from the sea-wall. It was an im- 
mense empty shell of wood and canvas over 
a stout iron skeleton 180 feet long, 33 feet 
wide, and 50 feet high. It had to be solidly 
constructed, not to invite the fate of the all- 
wood aerodrome of the French Maritime Bal- 
looning Station at Toulon, twice wrecked and 
once all but carried away, like a veritable 
wooden balloon, by tempests ! 

In spite of the aerodrome's risky form and 
curious construction, its sensational features 

233 



234 MY AIR-SHIPS 

were its doors. Tourists told one another 
(quite correctly) that doors so great as these 
had never been before, in ancient times or 
modern. They had been made to slide open 
and shut, above on wheels hanging from an 
iron construction that extended from the fa- 
cade on each side, and below on wheels 
that rolled over a rail. Each door was 
50 feet high by i6y 2 feet wide, and each 
weighed 9680 pounds. Yet their equilibrium 
was so well calculated that on the day of the 
inauguration of the aerodrome, these giant 
doors w r ere rolled apart by two little boys of 
eight and ten years respectively, the young 
Princes Ruspoli, grandsons of the Due de 
Dino, my host at Monte Carlo. 

While the new situation attracted me by its 
promise of convenient and protected winter 
practice, the prospect of doing some over-sea 
navigation with my air-ship w r as even more 
alluring. Even to the spherical balloonist, the 
over-sea problem has great temptations, con- 
cerning which an expert of the French navy 
has said: 

' The balloon can render the navy immense 



MONACO 235 

services on condition that its direction can be 
assured. 

" Floating over the sea, it can be at once 
scout and offensive auxiliary of so delicate a 
character that the General Service of the navy 
has not yet allowed itself to pronounce on 
the matter. We can no longer conceal it from 
ourselves, however, that the hour approaches 
when balloons, becoming new military en- 
gines, will acquire from the point of view of 
battle results a great and perhaps decisive 
action de guerre/' 

As for myself, I have never made it any se- 
cret that, to my mind, the first practical use of 
the air-ship will be found in war ; and the far- 
seeing Henri Rochefort, who was in the habit 
of coming to the aerodrome from his hotel at 
La Turbie, wrote a most significant editorial 
in this sense after I had laid before him the 
speed calculations of my " No. 7," then in 
course of building. 

" The day when it shall be established that 
a man can make his air-ship travel in a given 
direction and manceuver it at will during the 
four hours which the young Santos demands 



236 MY AIR-SHIPS 

to go from Monaco to Calvi," wrote Henri 
Rochefort, " there will remain little more for 
the nations to do than to throw down their 
arms. . . . 

" I am astonished that the capital impor- 
tance of this matter has not yet been grasped 
by all the professionals of aerostation. To 
mount in a balloon that one has not con- 
structed and which one is not in a state to 
guide constitutes the easiest of performances. 

A little cat has done it at the Folies-Ber- 

> it 

gere. . . . 

Now, in war service over land the air-ship 
will, doubtless, often have to mount to consid- 
erable heights to avoid the rifle-fire of the en- 
emy; but as the maritime auxiliary described 
by the expert of the French navy, its scouting 
role will, for the most part, be performed at 
the end of its guide-rope comparatively close 
to the waves and yet high enough to take in 
a wide view. Only when, for easily imagined 
reasons, it is desired to mount high for a short 
time will it quit the convenient contact of its 
guide-rope with the surface of the sea. 

For these considerations — and particularly 




Interior of Balloon-shed, Monte Carlo 



THE MARITIME GUIDE-ROPE 239 

the last— I was anxious to do a great deal of 
guide-roping over the Mediterranean. If the 
maritime experiment promises so much to 
spherical ballooning, it is doubly promising to 
the air-ship which, from the nature of its con- 
struction, carries comparatively little ballast. 
This ballast ought not to be currently sacri- 
ficed, as it is by the spherical balloonist, for 
the remedying of every little vertical aberra- 
tion Its purpose is for use in great emergen- 
cies. Nor ought the aerial navigator, particu- 
larly if he be alone, be forced to rectify his 
altitude continually by means of his propeller 
and shifting-weights. He ought to be free to 
navigate his air-ship : if on pleasure bent, with 
ease and leisure to enjoy his flight; if on war 
service, with facility for his observations and 
hostile manoeuvers. Therefore any automatic 
guarantee of vertical stability is peculiarly 
welcome to him. 

You know already what the guide-rope is. 
I have described it in my first experience of 
spherical ballooning. Over land, where there 
are level plains or roads, or even streets, where 
there are not too many troublesome trees, 



2 4 o MY AIR-SHIPS 

buildings, fences, telegraph and trolley poles 
and wires and like irregularities, the guide- 
rope is as great an aid to the air-ship as to 
the spherical balloon. Indeed, I have made 
it more so, for with me it is the central 
feature of my shifting- weights (Figures 7 
and 8). 

Over the uninterrupted stretches of the sea, 
my first Monaco flight proved it to be a true 
stabilisateur. Its very slight dragging resis- 
tance through the water is out of all propor- 
tion to the considerable weight of its floating 
extremity. According to its greater or less 
immersion, therefore, it ballasts or unballasts 
the air-ship. The balloon is held by the 
weight of the guide-rope down to a fixed level 
over the waves, without danger of being 
drawn into contact with them. For the mo- 
ment that the air-ship descends the slightest 
distance nearer to them, that very moment it 
becomes relieved of just so much weight, and 
must naturally rise again by that amount of 
momentary unballasting. In this way an in- 
cessant little tugging toward and away from 
the waves is produced, infinitely gentle, an 



THE MARITIME GUIDE-ROPE 241 

automatic ballasting and unballasting of the 
air-ship without loss of ballast ! 

My first flight over the Mediterranean, 
which was made on the morning of January 
29, 1902, proved more than this, unfortu- 
nately. It was seen that a miscalculation had 
been made with respect to the site of the aero- 
drome itself. In the navigation of the air, 
where all is new, such surprises meet the ex- 
perimenter at every turn. This ought to be 
remembered when one takes account of prog- 
ress. In the Paris-Madrid automobile race of 
1903 what minute precautions were not taken 
to secure the competitors against the perils of 
quick turnings and grade-crossings ! And yet 
how notably insufficient did they not turn out 
to be ! 

As the air-ship was being taken out from 
its house for its first flight on the morning of 
January 29, 1902, the spectators could see 
that nothing equivalent to the landing-stages 
which the air-ships of the future must have 
built for them existed in front of the building. 
The air-ship, loaded with ballast until it was 
a trifle heavier than the surrounding atmo- 



242 MY AIR-SHIPS 

sphere, had to be towed or helped out of the 
aerodrome and across the Boulevard de la 
Condamine before it could be launched into 
the air over the sea-wall. 

Now that sea-wall proved to be a danger- 
ous obstruction. From the sidewalk it was 
only waist-high ; but on the other side of it the 
surf rolled over pebbles from four to five me- 
ters below. 

The air-ship had to be lifted over the sea- 
wall more than waist-high, also, not to risk 
damaging the arms of its propeller ; and when 
half over, there was no one to sustain it from 
the other side. Its stem pointed obliquely 
downward, while its stern threatened to grind 
on the wall; scuffling among the pebbles be- 
low, on the sea side, half a dozen workmen 
held their arms high toward the descending 
keel as it was let down and pushed on toward 
them by the workmen in charge of it on the 
boulevard in front of the wall; and they were 
at last able to catch and right it only in time 
to prevent me from being precipitated from 
the basket. 

For this reason my return to the aerodrome 




PQ 



.m&Li 



THE MARITIME GUIDE-ROPE 245 

after this first flight became the occasion of 
a real triumph: for the crowd promptly took 
cognizance of the perils of the situation and 
foresaw difficulties for me when I should at- 
tempt to reenter the balloon-house. As there 
was no wind, however, and as i steered boldly, 
I was able to make a sensational entry with- 
out damage— and without aid! Straight as a 
dart the air-ship sped to the balloon-house. 
The police of the prince had with difficulty 
cleared the boulevard between the sea-wall 
and the wide-open doors. Assistants and su- 
pernumeraries leaned over the wall with out- 
stretched arms waiting for me; below on the 
beach were others ; but this time I did not need 
them. I slowed the speed of the propeller as 
I came to them. Just as I was half-way over 
the sea-wall, well above them all, I stopped 
the motor. Carried onward by the dying mo- 
mentum, the air-ship glided over their heads 
on toward the open door. They had grasped 
my guide-rope, to draw me down ; but as I had 
been coming diagonally, there was no need 
of it. Now they walked beside the air-ship 
into the balloon-house, as its trainer or the 



246 MY AIR-SHIPS 

stable-boys grasp the bridle of their race- 
horse after the course and lead him back in 
honor to the stable with his jockey in the sad- 
dle! 

It was admitted, nevertheless, that I ought 
not to be obliged to steer so closely on return- 
ing from my flights, — to enter the aerodrome 
as a needle is threaded by a steady hand,— be- 
cause a side gust of wind might catch me at 
the critical moment and dash me against a 
tree or lamp-post or telegraph or telephone 
pole, not to speak of the sharp-cornered build- 
ings on either side of the aerodrome. When 
I went out again for a short spin that same 
afternoon of January 29, 1902, the obstruc- 
tion of the sea-wall made itself only too evi- 
dent. The prince offered to tear down the 
wall. 

" I will not ask you to do so much/' I said. 
" It will be enough to build a landing-stage 
on the sea side of the wall, at the level of the 
boulevard." 

This was done after twelve days of work 
interrupted by persistent rain; and the air- 
ship, when it issued for its third flight, on Feb- 
ruary 10, 1902, had simply to be lifted a few 



THE MARITIME GUIDE-ROPE 247 

feet by men on each side of the wall. They 
drew it gently on until its whole length floated 
in equilibrium over the new platform that ex- 
tended so far out into the surf that its farther- 
most piles were always in six feet of water. 

Standing on this platform, they steadied the 
air-ship while its motor was being started, 
while I let out the overplus of water-ballast 
and shifted my guide-rope so as to point for 
an oblique drive upward. The motor began 
spitting and rumbling. The propeller began 
turning. 

" Let go, all ! " I cried for the third time at 
Monaco. 

Lightly the air-ship slid along its oblique 
course onward and upward. Then, as the 
propeller gathered force, a mighty push sent 
me flying over the bay. I shifted front the 
guide-rope again to make a level course. 
And out to sea the air-ship darted, its scarlet 
pennant fluttering symbolic letters as upon a 
streak of flame. They were the initial letters 
of the first line of Camoen's " Lusiad," the 
epic poet of my race : 

" Por mares nunca d'antes navegados ! " 
(" O'er seas heretofore unsailed! ") 



CHAPTER XVIII 

FLIGHTS IN MEDITERRANEAN WINDS 

IN my two previous experiments I had 
kept fairly within the wind-protected lim- 
its of the Bay of Monaco, whose broad ex- 
panse afforded ample room both for guide- 
roping and practice in steering. Furthermore, 
a hundred friends and thousands of friendly 
spectators stood around it from the terraces 
of Monte Carlo to the shore of La Condamine 
and up the other side to the heights of Old 
Monaco. As I circled round and round the 
bay, mounted obliquely and swooped down, 
fetched a straight course and then stopped ab- 
ruptly to turn and begin again, their applause 
came up to me agreeably. Now, on my third 
flight, I steered for the open sea. 

Out into the open Mediterranean I sped. 
The guide-rope held me at a steady altitude 
of about fiftv meters above the waves, as if in 

248 



o 
O 



o 




FLIGHTS IN MEDITERRANEAN WINDS 251 

some mysterious way its lower end were at- 
tached to them. 

In this way, automatically secure of my al- 
titude, I found the work of aerial navigation 




Fig. 10. 



become wonderfully easy. There was no bal- 
last to throw out, no gas to let out, no shifting 
of the weights except when I expressly de- 
sired to mount or descend. So, with my hand 
upon the rudder and my eye fixed on the far- 
off point of Cap Martin, I gave myself up 



2 5 2 MY AIR-SHIPS 

to the pleasure of this voyaging above the 
waves. 

Here in these azure solitudes there were no 
chimney-pots of Paris, no cruel, threatening 
roof-corners, no tree-tops of the Bois de Bou- 
logne. My propeller was showing its power 
and I was free to let it go. I had only to hold 
my course straight in the teeth of the breeze 
and watch the far-off Mediterranean shore 
flit past me. 

I had plenty of leisure to look about. Pres- 
ently I met two sailing-yachts scudding to- 
ward me down the coast. I noticed that their 
sails were full-bellied. As I flew on, I heard 
a faint cheer, and a graceful female figure on 
the foremost yacht waved a red foulard. As 
I turned to answer the politeness, I perceived 
with some astonishment that we were far 
apart already. 

I was now well up the coast, about half-way 
to Cap Martin. Above was the limitless blue 
void. Below was the solitude of white-capped 
waves. From the appearance of sailing-boats 
here and there, I could tell that the wind was 
increasing to a squall and I should have to 



FLIGHTS IN MEDITERRANEAN WINDS 253 

turn in it, before I could fly back upon it in 
my homeward trip. 

Porting my helm, I held the rudder tight. 
The air-ship swung round like a boat; then, 
as the wind sent me flying down the coast, my 
only work was to maintain the steady course. 
In scarcely more time than it takes to write it, 
I was opposite the Bay of Monaco again. 

With a sharp turn of the rudder I entered 
the protected harbor and, amid a thousand 
cheers, stopped the propeller, pulled in the for- 
ward shifting-weight, and let the dying im- 
petus of the air-ship carry it diagonally down 
to the landing-stage. This time there was no 
trouble. On the broad landing-stage stood 
my own men, assisted by those put at my dis- 
position by the prince. The air-ship was 
grasped as it came gliding slowly to them; 
and, without actually coming to a stop, it was 
" led " over the sea-wall across the Boulevard 
de la Condamine and into the aerodrome. 
The trip had lasted less than an hour and I 
had been within a few hundred yards of Cap 
Martin. 

Here was an obvious trip, first against and 
12 



254 MY AIR-SHIPS 

then with a stiff wind; and the curious may- 
render themselves an account of the fact by- 
glancing at the photographs marked " Wind 
A," and " Wind B." As they happened to be 
taken by a Monte Carlo professional intent 
simply on getting good photographs, they are 
impartial. 

" Wind A " shows me leaving the Bay of 
Monaco against a wind that is blowing back 
the smoke of the two steamers seen on the 
horizon. 

" Wind B " was taken up the coast, just be- 
fore I met the two little sailing-yachts which 
are obviously scudding toward me. 

The loneliness in which I found myself in 
the middle of this first extended flight up the 
Mediterranean shore was not part of the pro- 
gram. During the manufacture of the hydro- 
gen gas and the filling of the balloon, I had 
received the visits of a great many prominent 
people, several of whom signified their ability 
and readiness to lend valuable aid to these ex- 
periments. From Beaulieu, where his steam- 
yacht Lysistrata was at anchor, came Mr. 
James Gordon Bennett; and Mr. Eugene 




■■v^^/v-r^.;-^ 



"Wind A' 1 






"Wind B' 



FLIGHTS IN MEDITERRANEAN WINDS 257 

Higgins had already brought the Varuna up 
from Nice on more than one occasion. The 
beautiful little steam-yacht of M. Eiffel also 
held itself in readiness. 

It had been the intention of these owners, as 
it had been that of the prince with his Prin- 
cesse Alice, to follow the air-ship in its 
flights over the Mediterranean so as to be on 
the spot in case of accident. This first flight, 
however, had been taken on impulse before 
any program for the yachts had been ar- 
ranged; and my next long flight, as will be 
seen, demonstrated that this kind of protec- 
tion must not be counted on overmuch by air- 
ship captains. 

It was on February 12, 1902. One steam- 
chaloupe and two petroleum-launches, all 
three of them swift goers, together with three 
well-manned rowboats, had been stationed at 
intervals down the coast to pick me up in case 
of accident. The steam-chaloupe of the 
Prince of Monaco, carrying his Highness; 
the governor-general, and the captain of the 
Princesse Alice, had already started on the 
course ahead of time. The 40 horse-power 



258 MY AIR-SHIPS 

Mors automobile of Mr. Clarence Grey Dins- 
more and the 30 horse-power Panhard of 
M. Isidore Kahenstein were prepared to fol- 
low along the lower coast road. 

Immediately on leaving the Bay of Monaco 
I met the wind head on, as I steered my course 
straight down the coast in the direction of the 
Italian frontier. Putting on all speed, I held 
the rudder firm and let myself go. I could 
see the ragged outlines of the coast flit past 
me on the left. Along the winding road the 
two racing automobiles kept abreast with me, 
being driven at high speed. 

' It was all we could do to follow the air- 
ship along the curves of the coast road/' said 
one of Mr. Dinsmore's passengers to the re- 
porter of a Paris journal, " so rapid was its 
flight. In less than five minutes it had arrived 
opposite the Villa Camille Blanc, which is 
about three quarters of a mile distant from 
Cap Martin as the crow flies. 

" At this moment the air-ship was abso- 
lutely alone. Between it and Cap Martin I 
saw a single rowboat, while far behind was 
visible the smoke from the prince's chaloupe. 



FLIGHTS IN MEDITERRANEAN WINDS 259 

It was really no commonplace sight to see the 
air-ship thus hovering, isolated, over the im- 
mense sea." 

The wind, instead of subsiding, had been 
increasing. Here and there around the hori- 
zon I could see the bent white sails of yachts 
driven before it. The situation was new to 
me, so I made an abrupt turn and started back 
on the home stretch. 

Now again the wind was with me, stronger 
than it had been on the preceding flight down 
the coast. Yet it was easy steering ; and I re- 
marked with pleasure that going thus with 
the wind the pitching, or tangage, of the air- 
ship w r as much less. Though going fast with 
my propeller, and aided by the wind behind 
me, I felt no more motion— indeed, even less 
—than before. 

For the rest, how different were my sensa- 
tions from those of the spherical balloonist! 
It is true that he sees the earth flying back- 
ward beneath him at tremendous speed. But 
he knows that he is powerless. The great 
sphere of gas above him is the plaything of 
the air-current ; and he cannot change his di- 



2 6o MY AIR-SHIPS 

rection by a hair's-breadth. In my air-ship I 
could see myself flying over the sea ; but I had 
my hands on a helm that made me master of 
my direction in this splendid course. Once or 
twice, merely to give myself an account of it, 
I shoved the helm around a short arc. Obe- 
dient, the air-ship's stem swung to the other 
side, and I found myself speeding in a new 
diagonal course. But these manceuvers occu- 
pied only a few instants each; and each time 
I swung myself back on a straight line to the 
entrance to the Bay of Monaco, for I was fly- 
ing homeward like an eagle, and must keep 
my course. 

To those watching my return from the ter- 
races of Monte Carlo and Monaco town, as 
they told me afterward, the air-ship increased 
in size at every instant, like a veritable eagle 
bearing down upon them. As the wind was 
coming toward them, they could hear the low 
crackling rumble of my motor a long distance 
off. Faintly, now, their own shouts of en- 
couragement came to me. Almost instantly 
the shouts grew loud. Around the bay a 
thousand handkerchiefs were fluttering. I 




o 



FLIGHTS IN MEDITERRANEAN WINDS 263 

gave a sharp turn to the helm, and the air-ship 
leaped into the bay, amid the cheering and the 
waving, just as rain began to fall. 1 

I had first slowed and then stopped the mo- 
tor. As the air-ship now slowly approached 
the landing-stage, borne on by its dying mo- 
mentum, I gave the usual signal for those in 
the boats to seize my guide-rope. The steam- 
chaloupe of the prince, which had turned 
back midway between Monte Carlo and Cap 
Martin after I had overtaken and passed it on 
my out-trip, had by this time reached the 
bay. The prince, who was still on board, de- 
sired to catch the guide-rope; and those with 
him, having no experience of its weight and 
the force with which the air-ship drags it 
through the water, did not seek to dissuade 
him. Instead of catching the heavy, floating 
cordage as the darting chaloupe passed it, his 
Highness managed to get struck by it on the 
right arm, an accident which knocked him 
fairly to the bottom of the little vessel and 
produced severe contusions. 

1 " Half an hour after the aeronaut's return the wind became 
violent, a heavy storm followed, and the sea became very rough." 
Paris edition " New York Herald," February 13, 1902. 



264 MY AIR-SHIPS 

A second attempt to catch the guide-rope 
was more successful; and the air-ship was 
easily drawn to the sea-wall, over it, and into 
its house. Like everything in this new navi- 
gation, the particular manoeuver was new. I 
was still going faster than I appeared to be; 
and such attempts to catch and stop an air- 
ship even on its dying momentum are apt to 
upset some one. The only way not to get too 
abrupt a shock is to run with the machine and 
slow it down gently. 



CHAPTER XIX 

SPEED 

WHAT speed my " No. 6 " made on these 
Mediterranean flights was not pub- 
lished at the time because I had not sought to 
calculate it closely. Fresh from the troubling 
time limit of the Deutsch Prize competition, 
I amused myself frankly with my air-ship, 
making observations of great value to myself, 
but not seeking to prove anything to any one. 
The speed problem is, doubtless, the first of 
all air-ship problems ; and until high speed 
shall be arrived at, certain other problems of 
aerial navigation must remain in part un- 
solved. For example, take that of the air- 
ship's pitching (tangage). I think it quite 
likely that a critical point in speed will be 
found, beyond which, on each side, the pitch- 
ing will be practically nil. When going 
slowly or at moderate speed I have experi- 

265 



266 MY AIR-SHIPS 

enced no pitching, which in an air-ship like 
my " No. 6 " seems always to commence at 
fifteen to eighteen miles per hour through the 
air. Now, probably, when one passes this 
speed considerably, — say at the rate of thirty 
miles per hour,— all tan gage, or pitching, will 
be found to cease again, as I myself found 
when flying homeward on the wind in the 
voyage described in the last chapter. 

Speed must always be the final test between 
rival air-ships, because in itself speed sums up 
all other air-ship qualities, including " stabil- 
ity." At Monaco, however, I had no rivals to 
compete with. Furthermore, my prime study 
and amusement there was the beautiful work- 
ing of the maritime guide-rope; and this 
guide-rope, dragging through the water, must 
of necessity retard whatever speed I made. 
There could be no help for it. Such was the 
price I must pay for automatic equilibrium and 
vertical stability— in a word, easy navigation 
— so long as I remained the sole and solitary 
navigator of the air-ship. 

Nor is it an easy task to calculate an air- 
ship's speed. On these flights up and down the 




No. 9 " — Aeronaut leaves Basket 




No. 6" — Aeronaut going back to Basket 



SPEED 269 

Mediterranean coast, the speed of my return 
to Monaco, wonderfully aided by the wind, 
could bear no relation to the speed out, re- 
tarded by the wind ; and there was nothing to 
show that the force of the wind, going and 
coming, was constant. It is true that on these 
flights one of the difficulties standing in the 
way of such speed calculations — the " shoot 
the chutes " (mont agues Russes) of ever-va- 
rying altitude— was done away with by the 
operation of the maritime guide-rope ; but, on 
the other hand, as has been said, the dragging 
of the guide-rope's weight through the water 
acted as a very effectual brake. As the speed 
of the air-ship is increased, this brake-like ac- 
tion of the guide-rope (like that of the resis- 
tance of the atmosphere itself) grows, not in 
proportion to the speed, but in proportion to 
the square of it. 

On these flights along the Mediterranean 
coast the easy navigation afforded me by the 
maritime guide-rope was purchased, as nearly 
as I could calculate, by the sacrifice of about 
four or five miles per hour of speed ; but with 
or without maritime guide-rope, the speed cal- 



270 MY AIR-SHIPS 

culation has its own almost insurmountable 
difficulties. 

From Monte Carlo to Cap Martin at ten 
o'clock of a given morning may be quite a dif- 
ferent trip from Monte Carlo to Cap Martin 
at noon of the same day ; while from Cap Mar- 
tin to Monte Carlo, except in perfect calm, 
must always be a still different proposition. 
Nor can any accurate calculations be based on 
the markings of the anemometer, an instru- 
ment which I nevertheless carried. Out of 
simple curiosity I made note of its readings on 
several occasions during my trip of February 
12, 1902. It seemed to be marking between 
twenty and twenty-three miles per hour; but 
the wind, complicated by side gusts, acting at 
the same time on the air-ship and the wings of 
the anemometer windmill, — i.e., on two mov- 
ing systems whose inertia cannot possibly be 
compared, — would alone be sufficient to fal- 
sify the result. 

When, therefore, I state that, according to 
my best judgment, the average of my speed 
through the air on these flights was between 
eighteen and twenty-two miles per hour, it will 



SPEED 271 

be understood that it refers to speed through 
the air whether the air be still or moving, and 
to speed retarded by the dragging of the mari- 
time guide-rope. Putting this adverse influ- 
ence at the moderate figure of four and a half 
miles per hour, my speed through the still or 
moving air would be betw r een twenty-two and 
twenty-seven miles per hour. 

Rather than spend time over illusory calcu- 
lations on paper, I have always preferred to go 
on materially improving my air-ships. Later, 
when they come in competition with the rivals 
which no one awaits more ardently than my- 
self, all speed calculations made on paper and 
all disputes based on them must of necessity 
yield to the one sublime test of air-ship racing ! 

Where speed calculations have their real im- 
portance is in affording necessary data for the 
construction of new and more powerful air- 
ships. Thus the balloon of my racing " No. 
7," whose motive power depends on two 
propellers each i6y 2 feet in diameter and 
worked by a 60 horse-power motor, with 
a water-cooler, has its envelop made of two 
layers of the strongest French silk, four 



272 MY AIR-SHIPS 

times varnished, capable of standing, under 
dynamometric test, a traction of 6600 pounds 
for the linear meter. I will now try to explain 
why the balloon-envelop must be made so very 
much stronger as the speed of the air-ship is 
designed to be increased; and in so doing, I 
shall have to reveal the unique and paradox- 
ical danger that besets high-speed dirigibles, 
threatening them, not with beating their heads 
in against the outer atmosphere, but with 
blowing their tails out behind them ! 

Although the interior pressure in the bal- 
loons of my air-ships is very considerable, as 
balloons go, — the spherical balloon, having a 
hole in its bottom, is under no such pressure, 
— it is so little in comparison with the general 
pressure of the atmosphere that we measure 
it, not by " atmospheres/' but by centimeters 
or millimeters of water-pressure—^., the 
pressure that will send a column of water up 
that distance in a tube. One " atmosphere " 
means 1 kilogram of pressure to the square 
centimeter, or 15 pounds to the square inch; 
and it is equivalent to about 10 meters of 
water-pressure, or more conveninently, 1000 




2 



o 



SPEED 275 

centimeters of water. Now, supposing the in- 
terior pressure in my slower " No. 6 " to have 
been close up to 3 centimeters of water (it re- 
quired that pressure to open its gas-valves), it 
would have been equivalent to 1-333 of an at- 
mosphere; and as .1 atmosphere is equivalent 
to a pressure of 1000 grams (1. kilogram) on 
1 square centimeter, the interior pressure of 
my " No. 6 " would have been 1-333 of 1000 
grams, or 3 grams. Therefore on 1 square 
meter (10,000 square centimeters) of the 
stem-head of the balloon of my " No. 6," the 
interior pressure would have been 10,000 mul- 
tiplied by 3, or 30,000 grams— i.e., 30 kilo- 
grams, or 66 pounds. 

How is this interior pressure maintained 
without being exceeded ? Were the great ex- 
terior balloon filled w T ith hydrogen and then 
sealed up with wax at each of its valves, the 
sun's heat might expand the hydrogen, mak- 
ing it exceed this pressure and bursting the 
balloon; or should the sealed balloon rise high, 
the decreasing pressure of the outer atmo- 
sphere might let its hydrogen expand, with the 
same result. The gas-valves of the great 



276 



MY AIR-SHIPS 



balloon, therefore, must not be sealed; and, 
furthermore, they must always be very care- 
fully made, so that they will open of their own 
accord at the required and calculated pressure. 
This pressure (of 3 centimeters in the 
" No. 6"), it ought to be noted, is attained 
by the heating of the sun or by a rise in alti- 
tude, only when the balloon is completely filled 




Fig. 11. 



with gas; what may be called its working- 
pressure— about one fifth lower— is main- 
tained by the rotary air-pump. Worked con- 
tinually by the motor, it pumps air constantly 
into the small interior balloon. As much of 
this air as is needed to preserve the outer bal- 



o 
H 

H 






o 



SPEED 279 

loon's rigidity remains inside the little interior 
balloon ; but all the rest pushes its way out into 
the atmosphere again through its air-valve, 
which opens at a little less pressure than do 
the gas-valves. 

Let us now return to the balloon of my " No. 
6." The interior pressure on each square me- 
ter of its stem-head being continuously about 
30 kilograms, the silk material composing 
it must be normally strong enough to stand 
it; nevertheless, it will be easy to see how it 
becomes more and more relieved of that inte- 
rior pressure as the air-ship gets in motion 
and increases speed. Its striking against the 
atmosphere makes a counter-pressure against 
the outside of the stem-head. Up to 30 kilo- 
grams to the square meter, therefore, all in- 
crease in the air-ship's speed tends to reduce 
strain, so that the faster the air-ship goes, the 
less will it be liable to burst its head ! 

How fast may the balloon be carried on by 
motor and propeller before its head-stem 
strikes the atmosphere hard enough to more 
than neutralize the interior pressure? This, 
too, is a matter of calculation ; but to spare the 

13 



2 8o MY AIR-SHIPS 

reader, I will content myself with pointing out 
that my flights over the Mediterranean proved 
that the balloon of my " No. 6 " could safely 
stand a speed of twenty-two to twenty-seven 
miles per hour without giving the slightest 
hint of strain. Had I wanted an air-ship of 
the proportions of the " No. 6 " to go twice as 
fast, under the same conditions, its balloon 
must have been strong enough to stand four 
times its interior pressure of 3 centimeters 
of " water/' because the resistance of the at- 
mosphere grows, not in proportion to the 
speed, but in proportion to the square of the 
speed. 

The balloon of my " No. 7 " is not, of 
course, built in the precise proportions as that 
of my " No. 6 " ; but I may mention that it has 
been tested to resist an interior pressure of 
much more than 12 centimeters of " wa- 
ter "— in fact, its gas-valves open at that pres- 
sure only. This means just four times the in- 
terior pressure of my " No. 6." Comparing 
the two balloons in a general way, it is obvi- 
ous, therefore, that with no risk, and, indeed, 
with positive relief from outside pressure on 



SPEED 281 

its stem or head, the balloon of my " No. 7 " 
may be driven twice as fast as my easy-going 
Mediterranean pace of twenty-five miles per 
hour— or fifty miles ! 

I say with relief from outside pressure on 
the balloon's stem or head; and this brings us 
to the unique and paradoxical weakness of the 
fast-going dirigible. Up to the point where 
the exterior shall equal the interior pressure, 
we have seen how every increase of speed ac- 
tually guarantees safety to the stem of the bal- 
loon. Unhappily, it does not remain true of 
the balloon's stern-head. On it the interior 
pressure is also continuous; but speed cannot 
relieve it. On the contrary, the suction of the 
atmosphere behind the balloon as it speeds on 
increases also, almost in the same proportion 
as the pressure caused by driving the balloon 
against the atmosphere. And this suction, in- 
stead of operating to neutralize the interior 
pressure on the balloon's stern-head, increases 
the strain just that much, the pull being added 
to the push. Paradoxical as it may seem, 
therefore, the danger of the swift dirigible is 
to blow its tail out rather than its head in ! 



282 



MY AIR-SHIPS 



How is this danger to be met? Obviously, 
by strengthening the stern part of the balloon- 
envelop. We have seen that when the speed of 
my " No. 7 " shall be just great enough to 
completely neutralize the interior pressure on 
its stem or head, the strain on its stern-head 



rTTTTTTTTTTTTTl 



Li Li k i U U U UJ 



Fig. i2. 



will be doubled. For this reason I have 
doubled the balloon material at this point. 

I have reason to be careful of the balloon of 
my " No. J." In it the speed problem will be 
attacked definitively. It has two propellers, 
each 1 6y 2 feet in diameter. One will push, 
as usual, from the stern, while the other 
will pull from the stem, as in my " No. 4." 
Its 60 horse-power Clement motor will — if 
my expectations are fulfilled— give it a speed 
of between forty and fifty miles per hour. 



SPEED 283 

In a word, the speed of my " No. 7 " will 
bring us very close to practical every-day 
aerial navigation; for as we seldom have a 
wind blowing as much, even, as thirty miles 
per hour, such an air-ship will surely be able 
to go out daily during more than ten months 
in the twelve. 



CHAPTER XX 

AN ACCIDENT AND ITS LESSONS 

AT half-past two o'clock in the afternoon 
ii of February 14, 1902, the stanch air- 
ship which won the Deutsch Prize left the 
aerodrome of La Condamine on what was des- 
tined to be its last voyage. 

Immediately on quitting the aerodrome it 
began behaving badly, dipping heavily. It had 
left the balloon-house imperfectly inflated; 
hence it lacked ascensional force. To keep my 
proper altitude, I increased its diagonal point- 
ing and kept the propeller pushing it on up- 
ward. The dipping, of course, was due to the 
counter effort of gravity. 

In the shaded atmosphere of the aerodrome 
the air had been comparatively cool. The 
balloon was now out in the hot open sunlight. 
As a consequence, the hydrogen nearest to 
the silk cover rarefied rapidly. As the balloon 

284 



AN ACCIDENT AND ITS LESSONS 285 

had left the aerodrome imperfectly inflated, 
the rarefied hydrogen was able to rush to the 
highest possible point, the up-pointing stem. 
This exaggerated the inclination which I had 
made purposely. The balloon pointed higher 
and higher. Indeed, for a time it seemed al- 
most to be pointing perpendicularly. 

Before I had time to correct this " rearing- 
up " of my aerial steed, many of the diagonal 
wires had begun to give way, as the slanting 
pressure on them was unusual ; and others, in- 
cluding those of the rudder, caught in the pro- 
peller. 

Should I leave the propeller to grind on the 
rigging, the balloon-envelop would be torn the 
next moment, the gas would leave the balloon 
in a mass, and I would be precipitated into the 
waves with violence. 

I stopped the motor. I was now in the posi- 
tion of an ordinary spherical balloonist, at the 
mercy of the winds. These were taking me in- 
shore, where I would be presently cast upon 
the telegraph wires, trees, and house corners 
of Monte Carlo. 

There was but one thing to do. 



286 MY AIR-SHIPS 

Pulling on the manoeuver-valve, I let out a 
sufficient quantity of hydrogen and came 
slowly down to the surface of the water, in 
which the air-ship sank. 

Balloon, keel, and motor were successfully 
fished up the next day and shipped off to Paris 
for repairs. Thus abruptly ended my mari- 
time experiments ; but thus also I learned that, 
while a properly inflated balloon, furnished 
with the proper valves, has nothing to fear 
from gas displacement, it is best to be on the 
safe side and guard one's self against the pos- 
sibility of such displacement when by some 
neglect or other the balloon is allowed to go 
out imperfectly inflated. 

For this reason, in all my succeeding air- 
ships the balloon is divided into many com- 
partments by vertical silk partitions, not 
varnished. The partitions remaining unvar- 
nished, the hydrogen gas can slowly pass 
through their meshes from one compartment 
to another, to insure an equal pressure 
throughout. But as they are, nevertheless, 
partitions, they are always ready to guard 
against any precipitous rushing of gas toward 
either extremity of the balloon. 





Phase A 



l^&P*ttfe£> 




■ggsgr r-^.,-. 




Phase B 
Accident, February 14, 1902 




Phase C 






Phase D — before final collapse 
Accident, February 14, 1902 



#Ufei 



AN ACCIDENT AND ITS LESSONS 291 

Indeed, the experimenter with dirigible bal- 
loons must be continually on his guard against 
little errors and neglects of his aids. I have 
four men who have now been with me four 
years. They are in their way experts; and I 
have every confidence in them. Yet this thing 
happened: the air-ship was allowed to leave 
the aerodrome imperfectly inflated. Imagine, 
then, what might be the danger of an ex- 
perimenter with a set of inexperienced sub- 
ordinates ! 

In spite of their great simplicity, my air- 
ships require constant surveillance on a few 
capital heads. 

Is the balloon properly filled ? 

Is there any possibility of a leak? 

Is the rigging in condition ? 

Is the motor in condition ? 

Do the cords commanding rudder, motor, 
water-ballast, and the shifting guide-rope 
work freely ? 

Is the ballast properly weighed ? 

Looked on as a mere machine, the air-ship 
requires no more care than an automobile ; but 
from the point of view of consequences, the 



292 MY AIR-SHIPS 

need of faithful and intelligent surveillance is 
simply imperious. This very day the high- 
ways of all France are dotted with a thousand 
automobiles en panne, with their enthusiastic 
drivers crawling underneath them in the 
dust, oil-can and wrench in hand, repairing 
momentary accidents. They think no less of 
their automobile for this reason. Yet let the 
air-ship have the same trifling accident, and 
all the world is likely to hear of the fact ! 

In the first years of my experiments, I in- 
sisted on doing everything for myself. I 
" groomed " my balloons and motors with my 
own hands. My present aids understand my 
present air-ships; and nine times out of ten 
they hand them over to me in good condition 
for the voyage. Yet were I to begin experi- 
ments with a new type, I should have to train 
them all anew; and during that time I should 
have to care for the air-ships with my own 
hands again. 

On this occasion, the air-ship left the aero- 
drome imperfectly weighed and inflated, not 
so much by the neglect of my men as by reason 
of the imperfect situation of the aerodrome. 
In spite of the care that had been given to de- 



AN ACCIDENT AND ITS LESSONS 293 

signing and constructing it, from the very na- 
ture of its situation there was no space outside 
in which to send up the air-ship and ascertain 
if its ballast were properly distributed. Could 
this have been done, the imperfect inflation of 
the balloon would have been perceived in time. 

Looking back over all my varied experi- 
ences, I reflect with astonishment that one of 
my greatest dangers passed unperceived even 
by myself at the end of my most successful 
flight over the Mediterranean. 

It was at the time the prince attempted to 
grasp my guide-rope and was knocked into the 
bottom of his steam-chaloupe. I had entered 
the bay after flying homeward up the coast; 
and they were towing me toward the aero- 
drome. The air-ship had descended very close 
to the surface of the water, and they were pull- 
ing it still lower by means of the guide-rope, 
until it was not many feet above the smoke- 
stack of the steam-chaloupe, — and that smoke- 
stack was belching red-hot sparks ! 

Any one of those red-hot sparks might have, 
ascending, burnt a hole in my balloon, set fire 
to the hydrogen, and blown balloon and myself 
to atoms ! 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE FIRST OF THE WORLD'S AIR-SHIP STATIONS 

AIR-SHIP experimenters labor under one 
. peculiar disadvantage quite apart from 
the proper difficulties of the problem. It is 
due to the utter newness of travel in a third 
dimension, and consists in the slowness with 
which our minds realize the necessity of pro- 
viding for the diagonal mountings and de- 
scents of the air-ships, starting from and re- 
turning to the ground. 

When the Aero Club of Paris laid out its 
grounds at Saint Cloud, it was with the sole 
idea of facilitating the vertical mounting of 
spherical balloons. Indeed, no provisions were 
made, even, for the landing of spherical bal- 
loons, because their captains never hoped to 
bring them back to the Saint Cloud Balloon 
Park otherwise than by rail, packed in their 

294 



THE FIRST AIR-SHIP STATION 295 

boxes. The spherical balloon lands where the 
wind takes it. 

When I built my first air-ship house in the 
club's grounds at Saint Cloud, I dare say that 
the then novel advantages of possessing my 
own gas-plant, workshop, and a shelter in 
which the inflated dirigibles could be housed 
indefinitely withheld my attention from this 
other almost vital problem of surroundings. 
It was already a great progress for me not to 
be obliged to empty the balloon and waste its 
hydrogen at the end of each trip. Thus I was 
content to build, simply, an air-ship house with 
great sliding doors, without even taking pre- 
cautions to guarantee a flat, open space in 
front and, less still, on either side of it. When, 
little by little, trenches something like a yard 
deep — vague foundation-outlines for construc- 
tions that were never finished — began appear- 
ing here and there, to the right of my open 
doors and on beyond, I realized that my aids 
might risk falling into them in running to 
catch my guide-rope when I should be return- 
ing from a trip. And when the gigantic skel- 
eton of M. Henri Deutsche air-ship house, de- 



296 MY AIR-SHIPS 

signed to shelter " La Ville de Paris/' rose 
directly in front of my sliding doors and 
scarcely two air-ship's lengths distant from 
them, it dawned on me at last that here was 
something of a peril and more than a simple 
inconvenience due to natural crowding in a 
club's grounds. In spite of the new peril, the 
Deutsch Prize was won; returning from the 
Eiffel Tower I passed high above the skeleton. 
I may say here, however, that the foundation- 
trenches innocently caused the painful con- 
troversy about my time to which I have made 
a brief allusion in the chapter. Seeing that 
they might easily break their legs by stum- 
bling into those foundation-trenches, I had 
positively forbidden my men to run across 
that space to catch my guide-rope with their 
eyes and arms up in the air. Not dreaming 
that such a point could be raised, my men 
obeyed the injunction. Observing that I was 
quite master of my rudder, motor, and pro- 
peller, able to turn and return to the spot 
where the judges stood, they let me pass on 
over their heads without seeking to catch and 
run along with the guide-rope, a thing they 



THE FIRST AIR-SHIP STATION 297 

might have done easily— at the risk of their 
legs! 

Again at Monaco, after a well-planned air- 
ship house had been erected in what seemed 
an ideal spot, we have seen what dangers were 
nevertheless threatened by the sea-wall, the 
Boulevard de la Condamine with its poles, 
wires, and traffic, and the final disaster due 
entirely to the absence of a weighing-ground 
beside the aerodrome. These are dangers and 
inconveniences against which we come in time 
to be on our guard by actual and often dire 
experience. 

During the spring and summer of 1902 I 
took trips to England and the United States, 
of which I shall have a word to say later. Re- 
turning from these trips to Paris, I at once 
set about selecting the site of an aerodrome 
that should be all my own and in which the 
experience gained at such cost should be taken 
advantage of. This time, I resolved, my air- 
ship house should have an ample space around 
it. And, succeeding in a way, I realized — if 
I may say it— the first of the air-ship stations 
of the future. 



298 MY AIR-SHIPS 

After long search, I came on a fair-sized lot 
of vacant ground surrounded by a high stone 
wall, inside the police jurisdiction of the Bois 
de Boulogne but private property, situated 
on the Rue de Longchamps, in Neuilly Saint 
James. First, I had to come to an understand- 
ing with its owner. Then I had to come to an 
understanding with the Bois authorities, who 
took time to give a building permit to such an 
unusual construction as a house from which 
air-ships would go and come. 

The Rue de Longchamps is a narrow sub- 
urban street, little built on at this end, that 
gives on the Bagatelle gate to the Bois de 
Boulogne beside the training-ground of the 
same name. To go and come in my air-ships 
from this side is, however, inconvenient be- 
cause of the walls of the various properties, 
the trees that line the Bois so thickly, and the 
great park gates. To the right and left of 
my little property are other buildings. Be- 
hind me, across the Boulevard de la Seine, is 

A 

the river itself, with the He de Puteaux in it. 
It is from this side that I must go and come 
in my air-ships. Mounting diagonally in the 



3 

o 



> 



P 



o 



pi 




THE FIRST AIR-SHIP STATION 301 

air from my own open grounds, I pass over 
my wall, the Boulevard de la Seine, and turn 
when well above the river. Regularly I turn 
to the left and make my way, in a great arc, 
to the Bois by way of the training-ground, 
itself a fairly open space. 

There it stands in its grounds, the first of 
the air-ship stations of the future, capable 
of housing seven air-ships all inflated and 
prepared to navigate at an instant's notice! 
But, in spite of all the needs that I attempted 
to provide for in it, what a small and ham- 
pered place it is, compared with the great 
highly organized stations which the future 
must produce for itself, with their high-placed 
and spacious landing-stages to which air-ships 
will descend with complete safety and conve- 
nience, like great birds that seek nests on flat 
rocks! Such stations may have little car- 
tracks running out from their interior to the 
wide landing-spaces. The cars that run over 
them will pull the air-ships in and out by their 
guide-ropes, without loss of time or the aid of 
a dozen or more men. Their observation 
towers will serve for judges' timing-stations 

14 



302 MY AIR-SHIPS 

in aerial races: fitted with wireless telegraph 
apparatus, they may be able to communicate 
with distant goals and, perhaps, even with the 
air-ships in motion. Attached to their air- 
ship stations there will be gas-generating 
plants. There may be a casemated workshop 
for the testing of motors. There will cer- 
tainly be sleeping-rooms for experimenters 
who desire to make an early start and profit 
by the calm of the dawn. It is quite probable 
that there will also be balloon-envelop work- 
shops for repairs and changes— a carpenter- 
shop and a machine-shop with intelligent and 
experienced workmen ready and able to seize 
an idea and execute it. 

Meanwhile, my air-ship station of the pres- 
ent is said to resemble a great square tent, 
striped red and white, set in the midst of a 
vacant lot surrounded by a high stone wall. 
Its tent-like appearance is due to the fact that, 
being in a hurry to utilize it, I saw no reason 
to construct its walls or roof of wood. The 
framework consists of long rows of parallel 
wooden pillars. Across their tops is stretched 
a canvas roof, and the four sides are made of 




o 



THE FIRST AIR-SHIP STATION 305 

the same striped canvas. This makes a con- 
struction stronger than at first appears, the 
outside tent-stuff weighing some 2600 kilo- 
grams (5720 pounds), and being sustained be- 
tween the pillars by metallic cordage. 

Inside, the central stalls are 31 feet wide, 
165 feet long, and 44^2 feet high, afford- 
ing room for the largest dirigibles without 
permitting them to come into contact with 
each other. The great sliding doors are but 
a repetition of those of Monaco. 

When, in the spring of 1903, I found my 
air-ship station completed, I had three new 
air-ships ready to house in it. They were : 

My " No. 7." This I call my racing air- 
ship. It is designed and reserved for impor- 
tant competitions, the mere cost of filling it 
with hydrogen being more than three thou- 
sand francs, or six hundred dollars. It is true 
that, once filled, it may be kept inflated for 
a month at the expense of fifty francs per 
day for hydrogen to replace what is lost. 
Having a gas capacity of nearly forty-five 
thousand cubic feet, it possesses twice the lift- 
ing-power of my " No. 6," in which the 



3 o6 MY AIR-SHIPS 

Deutsch Prize was won ; and such is the neces- 
sary weight of its 60 horse-power water- 
cooled four-cylinder motor and its propor- 
tionally strong machinery that I shall proba- 
bly take up no more ballast in it than I took 
up in the " No. 6." Comparing their sizes and 
lifting-powers, it would make five of 

My " No. 9," the novel little " runabout," 
which I shall describe in the succeeding 
chapter. 

The third of the new air-ships is : 

My " No. 10," which has been called " The 
Omnibus." Its gas capacity of nearly eighty 
thousand cubic feet makes its balloon greater 
in size and lifting-power than even the racing 
" No. 7 " ; and should I, indeed, desire at any 
time to shift to it the latter's keel, all furnished 
with the racing motor and machinery, I might 
combine a very swift air-craft capable of car- 
rying myself, several aids, a large supply of 
both petroleum and ballast— not to speak of 
war munitions, were the sudden need of a bel- 
ligerent character. 

The prime purpose of my " No. 10," how- 
ever, is well indicated in its name " The Om- 



<w. £. 





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Jfl 


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THE FIRST AIR-SHIP STATION 309 

nibus." Its keel, or rather keels, as I have 
fashioned them, are double. That is to say, 
hanging underneath its usual keel, in which 
my basket is situated, there is a passenger- 
keel that holds similar baskets and a smaller 
one for my aid. Each passenger-basket is 
large enough to hold four passengers; and it 
is to carry such passengers that " The Omni- 
bus " has been constructed. 

Indeed, after mature reflection, it seemed 
to me that this must be the most practical and 
rapid way to popularize aerial navigation. In 
my other air-ships I have shown that it is pos- 
sible to mount and travel through the air on a 
prescribed course with no greater danger than 
one risks in any racing automobile. In " The 
Omnibus " I shall demonstrate to the world 
that there are very many men and women 
possessed of sufficient confidence in the aerial 
idea to mount with me as passengers in the 
first of the air-omnibuses of the future! 



CHAPTER XXII 

MY " NO. 9," THE LITTLE RUNABOUT 



a 



ONCE I was enamoured of high-power 
petroleum-automobiles: they can go at 
express-train speed to any part of Europe, 
finding fuel in any village. " I can go to Mos- 
cow or Lisbon ! " I said to myself. But when 
I discovered that I did not want to go to Mos- 
cow or to Lisbon, the small and handy electric 
runabout in which I do my errands about 
Paris and the Bois proved more satisfactory. 

Speaking from the standpoint of my plea- 
sure and convenience as a Parisian, my air- 
ship experience has been similar. When the 
balloon and motor of my 60 horse-power 
" No. 7 " were completed, I said to myself : 

" I can race any air-ship that is likely to be 
built!" But when I found that, in spite of 
the forfeits I paid into the Aero Club's trea- 
sury, there was no one ready to race with me, 

310 




o 



tf 



o 



MY "NO. 9," THE LITTLE RUNABOUT 313 

I determined to build a small air-ship run- 
about for my pleasure and convenience only. 
In it I would pass the time while waiting for 
the future to bring forth competitions worthy 
of my race-craft. 

So I built my " No. 9," the smallest of pos- 
sible dirigibles, yet very practical indeed. As 
originally constructed, its balloon's capacity 
was but 7770 cubic feet, permitting me to take 
up less than 66 pounds of ballast; and thus I 
navigated it for weeks, without inconvenience. 
Even when I enlarged its balloon to 9218 
cubic feet, the balloon of my " No. 6," in 
which I won the Deutsch Prize, would have 
made almost three of it, while that of my 
" Omnibus " is fully eight times its size. As 
I have already stated, its 3 horse-power 
Clement motor weighs but 26^4 pounds. 
With such a motor one cannot expect great 
speed ; nevertheless, this handy little runabout 
takes me over the Bois at between twelve and 
fifteen miles per hour, and this notwithstand- 
ing its egg-shaped form (Figure 13), which 
would seemingly be little calculated for cut- 
ting the air. Indeed, to make it respond 



3H 



MY AIR-SHIPS 



promptly to the rudder, I drive it thick end 
first. 

I have said that, as it was originally propor- 
tioned, the balloon of this smallest of possible 
dirigibles permitted me to take up less than 




Fig. 13. 

66 pounds of ballast. As now enlarged, its 
lifting-power is greater; but when account is 
taken of my own weight and the weight of 
keel, motor, screw, and machinery, the whole 
system becomes neither lighter nor heavier 
than the surrounding atmosphere when I have 
loaded it with 132 pounds of ballast. And it 
is just in this connection that it will be easiest 
to explain why I have called this little air-ship 
very practical. On Monday, June 29, 1903, I 



MY "NO. 9," THE LITTLE RUNABOUT 315 

landed with it on the grounds of the Aero 
Club at Saint Cloud, in the midst of six in- 
flated spherical balloons. After a short call, 
I started off again. 

" Can we not give you some gas ? " politely- 
asked my fellow r -clubmem 

" You saw me coming ,all the way from 
Neuilly," I replied. " Did I throw out any 
ballast?" 

" You threw out no ballast/' they admitted. 

" Then why should I be in need of gas ? " 

As a matter of scientific curiosity, I may re- 
late that I did not either lose or sacrifice a 
cubic foot of gas or a single pound of ballast 
that whole afternoon ; nor has that experience 
been at all exceptional in the very practical 
little " No. 9," or even in its predecessors. It 
will be remembered that on the day succeed- 
ing the winning of the Deutsch Prize my 
chief mechanician found that the balloon of 
my " No. 6 " would take no gas, because none 
had been lost 

After leaving my fellow-clubmen at Saint 
Cloud that afternoon, I made a typically prac- 
tical trip. To go from Neuilly Saint James 



316 MY AIR-SHIPS 

to the Aero Club's grounds I had already 
passed the Seine. Now, crossing it again, I 
made the cafe-restaurant of the Cascade, 
where I stopped for refreshments. It was by 
this time 5 p.m. Not wishing to return yet to 
my station, I crossed the Seine for a third time 
and went in a straight course as close to the 
great fort of Mont Valerien as delicacy per- 
mitted. Then, returning, I traversed the 
river once again and came to earth in my own 
grounds at Neuilly. 

During the whole trip my greatest altitude 
was 346 feet. Taking into consideration that 
my guide-rope hangs 132 feet below me and 
that the tops of the Bois trees extend up some 
70 feet from the ground, this extreme altitude 
left me but 140 feet of clear space for vertical 
manceuvering. 

It was enough; and the proof of it is that 
I do not go higher on these trips of pleasure 
and experiment. Indeed, when I hear of di- 
rigibles going up 1300 feet in the air without 
some special justifying object, I am filled with 
amazement. As I have already explained, 
the place of the dirigible is, normally, in low 



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f *feL Bt ^B hp 


- - 






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A- , 

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MY "NO. 9," THE LITTLE RUNABOUT 319 

altitudes; and the ideal is to guide-rope on a 
sufficiently low course to be left free from 
vertical manoeuvering. This is what M. Ar- 
mengaud jeune referred to in his learned in- 
augural discourse delivered before the So- 
ciete Frangaise de Navigation Aerienne in 
1901, when he advised me to quit the Mediter- 
ranean and go guide-roping over great plains 
like that of La Beauce. 

It is not necessary to go to the Plain of La 
Beauce. One can guide-rope even in the cen- 
ter of Paris if one goes about it at the proper 
moment. I have done it. 

I have guide-roped round the Arc de Tri- 
omphe and down the Avenue des Champs 
^lysees at a lower altitude than the house-tops 
on either side, fearing no ill and finding no 
difficulty. My first flight of this kind occurred 
when I sought for the first time to land in my 
" No. 9 " in front of my own house door at 
the corner of the Avenue des Champs Elysees 
and the Rue Washington, on Tuesday, June 

23, I903- 

Knowing that the feat must be accom- 
plished at an hour when the imposing plea- 



3 2o MY AIR-SHIPS 

sure-promenade of Paris would be least en- 
cumbered, I had instructed my men to sleep 
through the early part of the night in the air- 
ship station at Neuilly Saint James, so as to 
be able to have the " No. 9 " ready for an early 
start at dawn. I myself rose at 2 a.m., and in 
my handy electric automobile arrived at the 
station while it was yet dark. The men still 
slept. I climbed the wall, waked them, and 
succeeded in quitting the earth on my first di- 
agonally upward course over the wall and 
above the river Seine before the day had 
broken. Turning to the left, I made my way 
across the Bois, picking out the open spaces so 
as to guide-rope as much as possible. 

When I came to trees, I jumped over them. 
So, navigating through the cool air of the de- 
licious dawn, I reached the Porte Dauphine 
and the beginning of the broad Avenue du 
Bois de Boulogne, which leads directly to the 
Arc de Triomphe. This carriage-promenade 
of Tout-Paris was absolutely empty. 

" I will guide-rope up the Avenue of the 
Bois ! " I said to myself gleefully. 

What this means you will perceive when I 




Cm 
O 



O 



o 




O 



MY " NO. 9," THE LITTLE RUNABOUT 323 

recall that my guide-rope's length is barely 
132 feet, and that one guide-ropes best with 
66 feet of it trailing along the ground. Thus 
I went lower than the roofs of many houses 
on each side. I call this practical air-ship 
navigation because : 

(a) It leaves the aerial navigator free to 
steer his course without pitching and without 
care or effort to maintain his steady altitude. 

(b) It can be done with absolute safety 
from falling, not only to the navigator, but 
also to the air-ship— a consideration not with- 
out its merit when the cost both of repairs and 
hydrogen gas is taken into count. 

(c) When the wind is against one — as it* 
was on this occasion — one finds less of it in 
these low altitudes. 

So I guide-roped up the Avenue of the Bois. 
So, some day, will explorers guide-rope to the 
North Pole from their ice-locked steamship 
after it has reached its farthest possible point 
north. Guide-roping over the ice-pack, they 
will make the very few hundreds of miles to 
the pole at the rate of from forty to fifty miles 
per hour. Even at the rate of thirty miles, the 



3 2 4 MY AIR-SHIPS 

trip to the pole and back to the ship could be 
taken between breakfast and supper-time. I 
do not say that they will land the first time at 
the pole; but they will circle round about the 
spot, take observations, and return— for 
supper ! 

I might have guide-roped under the Arc de 
Triomphe had I thought myself worthy. In- 
stead, I rounded the national monument, to 
the right, as the law directs. Naturally, Ihad 
intended to go on straight down the Avenue 
des Champs Elysees; but here I met a diffi- 
culty. All the avenues meeting at the great 
" Star " look alike from the air-ship. Also, 
they look narrow. I was surprised and con- 
fused for a moment ; and it was only by look- 
ing back, to note the situation of the arch, that 
I could find my avenue. 

Like that of the Bois, it was deserted. Far 
down its length I saw a solitary cab. As I 
guide-roped along it to my house at the corner 
of the Rue Washington, I thought of the time, 
sure to come, when the owners of handy little 
air-ships will not be obliged to land in the 
street, but will have their guide-ropes caught 



MY " NO. 9," THE LITTLE RUNABOUT 327 

by their domestics on their own roof-gardens. 
But such roof-gardens must be broad and un- 
incumbered. 

So I reached my corner, to which I pointed 
my stem slightly and descended very gently. 
Two servants caught, steadied, and held the 
air-ship while I mounted to my apartment for 
a cup of coffee. From my round bay-window 
at the corner I looked down upon the air-ship. 
Were I to receive the municipal permission, it 
would not be difficult to build an ornamental 
landing-stage out from that window! 

Projects like these will constitute work for 
the future. Meanwhile the aerial idea is mak- 
ing progress; a small boy of seven years of 
age has mounted with me in the " No. 9 " ; 
and a charming young lady has actually navi- 
gated it alone for something like a mile ! The 
boy will surely make an air-ship captain, if he 
gives his mind to it. The occasion was the 
Children's Fete at Bagatelle, on June 26, 1903. 
Descending among them in the " No. 9," I 
asked : 

" Does any little boy want to go up? " 

Such were the confidence and courage of 



328 MY AIR-SHIPS 

young France and America, that instantly I 
had to choose among a dozen volunteers. I 
took the nearest to me. 

" Are you not afraid? " I asked as the air- 
ship rose. 

" Not a bit ! " he answered. The cruise of 
the " No. 9 " on this occasion was naturally 
a short one; but the other, in which the first 
woman to mount, accompanied or unaccom- 
panied, in any air-ship, actually mounted 
alone and drove the " No. 9 " free from all 
human contact with its guide-rope for a dis- 
tance of considerably over a half-mile, is wor- 
thy of preservation in the annals of aerial 
navigation. 

The heroine, a very beautiful young lady 
well known in New York society, having vis- 
ited my station with her friends on several 
occasions, confessed an extraordinary desire 
to navigate the air-ship. 

" You mean that you would have the cour- 
age to be taken up in the free balloon, with 
no one holding its guide-rope?" I asked. 
" Mademoiselle, I thank you for the confi- 
dence ! " 




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MY "NO. 9," THE LITTLE RUNABOUT 331 

" Oh, no," she said. " I do not want to be 
taken up. I want to go up alone and navigate 
it free, as you do." 

I think that the simple fact that I consented 
on condition that she would take a few lessons 
in the handling of the motor and machinery 
speaks eloquently in favor of, my own confi- 
dence in the " No, 9." She had three such les- 
sons ; and then, on a date that will be memo- 
rable in the Fasti of dirigible ballooning, 
rising from my station grounds in the smallest 
of possible dirigibles, she cried : " Let go, 
all!" 

From my station at Neuilly Saint James 
she guide-roped to Bagatelle. The guide-rope 
trailing some 30 feet gave her an altitude 
and equilibrium that never varied. I will not 
say that no one ran along beside the dragging 
guide-rope; but, certainly, no one touched it 
until the termination of the cruise at Baga- 
telle, when the moment had arrived to pull 
down the intrepid girl-navigator. 



15 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE AIR-SHIP IN WAR 

ON Saturday, July n, 1903, at about 
10 a.m., the wind blowing at the time 
in gusts, I accepted a wager to go to luncheon 
at the sylvan restaurant of the Cascade in my 
little " No. 9 " air-ship. While the " No. 9," 
with its egg-shaped balloon and' motor of but 
3 horse-power, is not built for speed,— or, 
what amounts to the same thing, for battling 
with the wind,— I thought that I could do it. 
Reaching my station at Neuilly Saint James 
at about 11.30 a.m., I had the little craft 
brought out and carefully weighed and bal- 
anced. It was in perfect condition, having 
lost none of its gas from the previous day. At 
11.50 I started off. Fortunately, the wind 
came to me head-on as I steered for the Cas- 
cade. My progress was not rapid ; but I nev- 
ertheless met my friends on the lawn of that 

33 2 



THE AIR-SHIP IN WAR 333 

famous restaurant of the Bois de Boulogne 
at 12.30 noon. We took our luncheon; and I 
was preparing to depart when there began an 
adventure that may take me far. 

As everybody knows, the restaurant of the 
Cascade is close to Longchamps. While we 
lunched, officers of the French army engaged 
in marking out the positions of the troops for 
the grand review of July 14 observed the air- 
ship on the lawn, and came to inspect it. 

" Shall you come to the review in it? " they 
asked me. The year previous there had been 
question of such a demonstration in presence 
of the army; but I had hesitated for reasons 
that may be readily divined. After the visit 
of the King of England, I was asked on every 
hand why I had not brought out the air-ship 
in his honor; and the same questions had 
arisen in anticipation of the visit of the King 
of Italy, who had been expected to be present 
at this review. 

I answered the officers that I could not 
make up my mind; that I was not sure how 
such an apparition would be viewed ; and that 
my little " No. 9,"— the only one of my fleet 



334 MY AIR-SHIPS 

actually " in commission,"— not being built 
for battling with high winds, could not be 
relied upon to keep an engagement in it. 

" Come and choose a place to land," they 
said; " we will mark it out for you, in any 
case." And, as I continued to insist on my 
uncertainty of being present, they very cour- 
teously picked out and marked a place for me 
themselves, opposite the spot to be occupied by 
the President of the Republic, in order that 
M. Loubet and his staff might have a perfect 
view of the air-ship's evolutions. 

" You will come if you can," the officers 
said. " You need not fear to make such a 
provisional engagement, for you have already 
given your proofs." 

I hope I shall not be misunderstood when I 
say that it may be possible that those superior 
officers did good work for their army and 
country that morning: because, in order to 
begin, one must make a beginning; and I 
should scarcely have ventured to the review 
without some kind of invitation. 

As a consequence of my visit a whole train 
of events followed. 



THE AIR-SHIP IN WAR 3 3| 

In the early morning of July 14, 1903, as 
the " No. 9 " was weighed and balanced, I 
was nervous lest some unforeseen thing might 
happen to it in my very grounds. One is 
often thus on great occasions; and I did not 
seek to conceal it from myself that this, the 
first presentation of an air-ship to any army, 
would be a great occasion. 

On ordinary days I never hesitate to mount 
from my grounds, over the stone wall and 
the river, and so on to Bagatelle. This morn- 
ing I had the " No. 9 " towed to the railing 
of Bagatelle by means of its guide-rope. 

At 8.30 a.m. I called, " Let go, all! " Ris- 
ing, I found my level course at an altitude of 
less than 350 feet, and in a few moments was 
circling and manceuvering above the heads of 
the soldiers nearest to me. Thence I passed 
over Longchamps; and arriving opposite the 
President, I fired a salute of twenty-one 
blank revolver-cartridges. 

I did not take the place marked out for me. 
Fearing to disturb the good order of the re- 
view by prolonging an unusual sight, I made 
my evolutions in the presence of the army last, 



336 MY AIR-SHIPS 

all told, less than ten minutes. After this I 
steered for the Polo Grounds, where I was 
congratulated by numbers of my friends. 

These congratulations I found the next day 
repeated in the Paris papers, together with 
conjectures of all kinds concerning the use of 
the air-ship in war. The superior officers who 
came to me at the Cascade that morning had 
said: "It is practical, and will have to be 
taken account of in war." 

"I am entirely at your service." had been 
my answer at the time ; and now, under these 
influences. I sat down and wrote to the Min- 
ister of War, offering, in case of hostilities 
with any country save those of the two Amer- 
icas, to put my aerial fleet at the disposition 
of the government of the Republic. 

In doing this I merely put into formal writ- 
ten words the offer which I certainly should 
feel bound to make in case of the breaking out 
of such hostilities at any future time during 
my residence in France. It is in France that 
I have met with all my encouragement: in 
France and with French material 1 have made 
all my experiments: and the mass of my 



THE AIR-SHIP IX WAR 337 

friends are French. I excepted the two 
Americas because I am an American; and I 
added that in the impossible case of a war be- 
tween France and Brazil, I should feel bound 
to volunteer my services to the land of my 
birth and citizenship. 

A few days later I received the following 
letter from the French Minister of War: 

u MlNISTERE DE LA GUERRE, 

" Cabinet dv Ministre, 

Republioue Frantaise, 
Paris, le 19 juillet, 1903, 
'• Monsieur: 

" During the review of July 14, I had re- 
marked and admired the ease and security 
with which the balloon you were steering 
made its evolutions. It was impossible not to 
acknowledge the progress which you have 
given to aerial navigation. It seems that, 
thanks to vou, such navigation must hence- 
forward lend itself to practical applications, 
especially from the military point of view. 

"' I consider that, in this respect, it may ren- 
der very substantial services in time of war. 



338 MY AIR-SHIPS 

I am very happy, therefore, to accept the offer 
which you make, of putting, in case of need, 
your aerial flotilla at the disposition of the 
government of the Republic ; and, in its name, 
I thank you for your gracious proposition, 
which shows your lively sympathy for France. 

" I have appointed Chief of Battalion Hir- 
schauer, commanding the Battalion of Bal- 
loonists in the First Regiment of Engineers, 
to examine, in agreement with you, the dispo- 
sitions to take for putting the intentions you 
have manifested into execution. Lieutenant- 
Colonel Bourdeaux, sous-chef of my cabinet, 
will also be associated with this superior offi- 
cer, in order to keep me personally aware of 
the results of your joint labors. 

" Recevez, Monsieur, les assurances de ma 
consideration la plus distinguee. 

(Signed) "General Andre." 

" A Monsieur Alberto Santos-Dumont" 

On Friday, July 31, 1903, Commandant 
Hirschauer and Lieutenant-Colonel Bour- 
deaux spent the afternoon with me at my air- 
ship station at Neuilly Saint James, where 



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THE AIR-SHIP IN WAR 341 

I had my three newest air-ships, the racing 
" No. 7," the omnibus " No. 10," and the 
runabout " No. 9," ready for their study. 
Briefly, I may say that the opinions expressed 
by the representatives of the Minister of War 
were so unreservedly favorable that a practi- 
cal test of a novel character was decided to 
be made. Should the air-ship chosen pass suc- 
cessfully through it, the result will be conclu- 
sive of its military value. 

Now that these particular experiments are 
leaving my exclusively private control, I will 
say no more of them than what has been al- 
ready published in the French press. The test 
will probably consist of an attempt to enter 
one of the French frontier towns, such as Bel- 
fort or Nancy, on the same day that the 
air-ship leaves Paris. It will not, of course, 
be necessary to make the whole journey in the 
air-ship ; a military railway wagon may be as- 
signed to carry it, with its balloon uninflated, 
with tubes of hydrogen to fill it, and with all 
the necessary machinery and instruments ar- 
ranged beside it. At some station a short 
distance from the town to be entered, the 

16 



342 MY AIR-SHIPS 

wagon may be uncoupled from the train ; and 
a sufficient number of soldiers accompanying 
the officers will unload the air-ship and its ap- 
pliances, transport the whole to the nearest 
open space, and at once begin inflating the 
balloon. Within two hours from the time of 
quitting the train, the air-ship may be ready 
for its flight to the interior of the technically 
besieged town. 

Such may be the outline of the task— a 
task presented imperiously to French balloon- 
ists by the events of 1870-71, and which all 
the devotion and science of the Tissandier 
brothers failed to accomplish. To-day, the 
problem may be set with better hope of suc- 
cess. All the essential difficulties may be re- 
vived by the marking out of a hostile zone 
around the town that must be entered; from 
beyond the outer edge of this zone, then, the 
air-ship will rise and take its flight— across it. 

Will the air-ship be able to rise out of rifle- 
range? I have always been the first to insist 
that the normal place of the air-ship is in low 
altitudes; and I shall have written this book 
to little purpose if I have not shown the reader 



THE AIR-SHIP IN WAR 3 43 

the real dangers attending any brusk vertical 
mounting to considerable heights. For this 
we have the terrible Severo accident be- 
fore our eyes. In particular, I have expressed 
astonishment at hearing of experimenters 
rising to these altitudes without adequate 
purpose, in their early stages of experience 
with dirigible balloons. All this is very dif- 
ferent, however, from a reasoned, cautious 
mounting, whose necessity has been foreseen 
and prepared for. 

To keep out of rifle-range, the air-ship will 
but seldom be obliged to make these tremen- 
dous vertical leaps.' Its navigator, even at a 
moderate altitude, will enjoy a very extended 
view of the surrounding country. Thus he will 
be able to perceive danger afar off and take 
his precautions. Even in my little " No. 9," 
which carries only 60 kilograms of ballast, I 
could rise— materially aided by my shifting- 
weights and propeller— to great heights. If 
I have not done so, it is because it would have 
served no useful purpose during a period of 
pleasure navigation, while it would but have 
added danger to experiments from which I 



344 MY AIR-SHIPS 

have sought to eliminate all danger. Hazards 
like these are to be accepted only when a good 
cause justifies them. 

The experiments above named are, of 
course, of a nature interesting warfare by 
land. I cannot abandon this topic, however, 
without referring to one unique maritime ad- 
vantage of the air-ship. This is its naviga- 
tor's ability to perceive bodies moving be- 
neath the surface of the water. Cruising at 
the end of its guide-rope, the air-ship will 
carry its navigator here and there at will, at 
the right height above the waves. Any sub- 
marine boat, stealthily pursuing its course un- 
derneath them, will be beautifully visible to 
him, while from a war-ship's deck it would be 
quite invisible. This is a well-observed fact, 
and depends on certain optical laws. Thus, 
very curiously, the twentieth-century air-ship 
must become, from the beginning, the great 
enemy of that other twentieth-century marvel, 
the submarine boat ! And not only its enemy, 
but its master ! For, while the submarine boat 
can do no harm to the air-ship, the latter, hav- 
ing twice its speed, can cruise about to find it, 



THE AIR-SHIP IN WAR 3 45 

follow all its movements, and signal them to 
the war-ships against which it is moving. 
Indeed, it may be able to destroy the subma- 
rine boat, by sending down to it long arrows 
filled with dynamite and capable of penetrat- 
ing to depths underneath the waves impossible 
to gunnery from the decks of a war-ship ! 



CHAPTER XXIV 

PARIS AS A CENTER OF AIR-SHIP 
EXPERIMENTS 

AFTER leaving Monte Carlo in February, 
l. 1902, I received many invitations from 
abroad to navigate my air-ships. In London, 
in particular, I was received with great friend- 
liness by the Aero Club of Great Britain, 
under whose auspices my " No. 6," fished 
from the bottom of the Bay of Monaco, re- 
paired, and once again inflated, was exhibited 
at the Crystal Palace. 

From St. Louis, where the organizers of the 
Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exposition 
had already decided to make air-ship flights a 
feature of their World's Fair in 1904, I re- 
ceived an invitation to inspect the grounds, 
suggest a course, and confer with them on 
conditions. As it was officially announced 
that a sum of two hundred thousand dollars 

346 



AIR-SHIP EXPERIMENTS AT PARIS 347 

had been voted and set apart for prizes, 
it might be expected that the emulation 
of air-ship experimenters would be well 
aroused. 

Arriving at St. Louis in the summer of 
1902, I at once saw that the splendid open 
spaces of the exposition grounds offered the 
best of race-courses. The prevailing idea at 
that moment in the minds of some of the au- 
thorities was to set a long course of many 
hundreds of miles — say from St. Louis to Chi- 
cago. This, I pointed out, would be unprac- 
tical, if only for the reason that the exposition 
public would desire to see the flights from 
start to finish. I suggested that three great 
towers or flag-staffs be erected in the grounds 
at the corners of an equal-sided triangle. 
The comparatively short course around them 
—between ten and twenty miles— would af- 
ford a decisive test of dirigibility, no matter 
in what way the wind might blow; while as 
for speed, the necessary average might be in- 
creased fifty per cent, over that fixed for the 
Deutsch Prize competition in Paris. 

Such was my modest advice. I also thought 



348 MY AIR-SHIPS 

that, out of the appropriation of two hundred 
thousand dollars (one millidn francs), a 
grand prize of dirigible aerostation of one 
hundred thousand dollars should be offered; 
bnly by means of such an inducement, it 
seemed to me, could the necessary emulation 
among air-ship experimenters be aroused. 

While never seeking to make profit from 
my air-ships,^ I have always offered to com- 
pete for prizes. While in London, and again 
in New York, both before and after my St. 
Louis visit, competitions with prize sanctions 
were suggested to me for immediate effort, 
I accepted all of them to this point, that I had 
my air-ships brought to the spot at consider- 
able cost and effort; and had the prize funds 
been deposited, I would have done my best to 
win them. Such deposits failing, I in each 
case returned to my home in Paris, to continue 
my experiments in my own way, awaiting 
the great competition of St. Louis. 

Prize or no prize, I must work; andTSshall 
always work in this my chosen field of aero- 
station. For this my place is Paris, where the 
public, in particular the kindly and enthusi- 



AIR-SHIP EXPERIMENTS AT PARIS 349 

astie populace, both knows and trusts me. 
Here in Paris I go up for my own pleasure, 
day by day, as my reward for long and costly 
experiment. 

In England and America it is quite differ- 
ent. When I take my air-ships and my em- 
ployees to those countries, build my own bal- 
loon-house, furnish my own gas-plant, and 
risk breaking machines that cost more than 
any automobile, I want it to be done with a 
settled aim. 

I sav that I want it to be done with a^settled 
aim so that, if I fulfil the aim, I may no longer 
be criticized, at least on that particular head. 
Otherwise I might go to the moon and back 
and yet accomplish nothing in the estimation 
of my critics, and— though perhaps to a less 
extent — in the mind of the public which they 
seek to sway. 

Here is the principal reason why I have 
sought to win prizes: because the most ra- 
tional consecration of such effort and its ful- 
filment is found in a serious money prize. 
The mind of the public make the obvious con- 
nection. When a valuable prize is handed 



350 MY AIR-SHIPS 

over, it concludes that something- has been 
done to win it. 

To win such prizes, then, I waited long in 
London and New York; but, as they never 
passed from words to deeds, after having en- 
joyed myself very thoroughly both socially 
and as a tourist, I returned to my work and 
pleasure in the Paris which I call my home. 

And, really, after all is said and done, there 
is no place like Paris for air-ship experiment. 
Nowhere else can the experimenter depend on 
the municipal and state authorities to be so 
liberal. 

Take the development of automobilism as 
an example. It is universally admitted, I im- 
agine, that this great and peculiarly French 
industry could not have developed without the 
speed license which the French authorities 
have wide-mindedly permitted. In spite of the 
most powerful social and industrial influences, 
and in spite of it being England's turn to offer 
hospitality to the James Gordon Bennett Cup 
Race of 1903, the English automobilists were 
not allowed to put their splendid roads out of 
the public use for its accommodation for a 



AIR-SHIP EXPERIMENTS AT PARIS 351 

single day. So the great event had to come 
off in Ireland. 

In France, and in France only, are not only 
the authorities, but the great mass of citizens, 
so much alive to their advantage in the devel- 
opment of this national industry that, day by 
day, year in and year out, they permit ten 
thousand automobiles to go tearing through 
their highroads at a really dangerous speed. 
In Paris, in particular, one sees a " scorch- 
ing " average in its great park, and in its very 
avenues and streets, that causes Londoners 
and tourists from New York to stand aghast. 

In this same order of ideas I may here state 
that, in spite of the tragic air-ship accidents 
of 1902, I have never once been limited or in 
any way impeded in the course of my experi- 
ments by the Parisian authorities; while, as 
for the public, no matter where I land with an 
air-ship, — in the country roads of the suburbs, 
in private gardens even of great villas, in the 
avenues and parks and public places of the 
capital,— I meet with unvarying friendly aid, 
protection, and enthusiasm from the crowd ! 

From that first memorable day when the 



352 MY AIR-SHIPS 

big boys flying their kites over Bagatelle 
seized my guide-rope and saved me from an 
ugly fall as promptly and intelligently as they 
had seized the idea of pulling me against the 
wind, to the critical moment on that summer 
day in 1901 when, in my first trial for the 
Deutsch Prize, I descended to repair my rud- 
der and good-natured workingmen found me 
a ladder in less time than it takes me to write 
the words, and on down to the present mo- 
ment when I take my pleasure in the Bois in 
my small " No. 9," I have had nothing but 
unvarying friendliness from the intelligent 
Parisian populace. 

I need not say that it is a great thing for an 
air-ship experimenter thus to have the confi- 
dence and friendly aid of a whole population. 
Over certain European frontiers spherical 
balloons have even been shot at! And I have 
often wondered what kind of a reception one 
of my air-ships would meet with in the coun- 
try districts of England itself. 

For these reasons and a hundred others, I 
consider that my air-ship's home, like my own, 
is Paris. As a boy in Brazil, my heart turned 



AIR-SHIP EXPERIMENTS AT PARIS 353 

to the City of Light, above which, in 1783, the 
first Montgolfier had been sent up ; where the 
first of the world's aeronauts had made his 
first ascension; where the first hydrogen-bal- 
loon had been set loose ; where first an air-ship 
had been made to navigate the air with its 
steam-engine, screw-propeller, and rudder. 

As a youth I made my own first balloon as- 
cension from Paris. In Paris I have found 
balloon-constructors, motor-makers, and ma- 
chinists possessed not only of skill but of 
patience. In Paris I made all my first experi- 
ments. In Paris I won the Deutsch Prize in 
the first dirigible to do a task against a time 
limit. And now that I have not only what I 
call my racing air-ship, but a little " run- 
about/' in which to take my pleasure over the 
trees of the Bois, it is in Paris that I am en- 
joying my reward in it as— what I was once 
called reproachfully— an " aerostatic sports- 
man " ! 



CONCLUDING FABLE 

MORE REASONING OF CHILDREN 

DURING these years Luis and Pedro, the 
ingenuous country boys whom we 
found reasoning about mechanical inventions 
in the introductory fable of this book, have 
spent some time in Paris. They were present 
at the winning of the Deutsch Prize for aerial 
navigation; they spent the winter of 1901- 
1902 at Monte Carlo; they had good places at 
the review of July 14, 1903; and they have 
broadened their education by the sedulous 
reading of scientific weeklies and the daily 
newspapers. Now they are preparing to re- 
turn to Brazil. 

The other day, seated on the terrace of the 
Cascade in the Bois de Boulogne, they argued 
on the problem of aerial navigation. 

354 






CONCLUDING FABLE 355 

" These tentatives with so-called dirigible 
balloons can bring us no nearer to its solu- 
tion/' said Pedro. " Look you : they are filled 
with a substance — hydrogen— fourteen times 
lighter than the medium in which it floats — 
the atmosphere. It would be just as possible 
to force a tallow candle through a brick 
wall!" 

" Pedro/' said Luis, " do you remember 
your objections to my wagon- wheels ? " 

" To the locomotive engine? " 

"To the steamboat?" 

" Our only hope to navigate the air," con- 
tinued Pedro, taking no notice of these inter- 
rogations, " must, in the nature of things, be 
found in devices heavier than the air, in fly- 
ing-machines or aeroplanes. Reason by anal- 
ogy. Look at the bird. . . ." 

" Once you desired me to look at the fish," 
said Luis. " You said the steamboat ought to 
wriggle through the water. . . ." 






/ 



356 MY AIR-SHIPS 

" Do be serious, Luis/' said Pedro, in 
conclusive tones. " Exercise common sense. 
Does man fly? No. Does the bird fly? Yes. 
Then, if man would fly, let him imitate the 
bird. Nature has made the bird. Nature 
never goes wrong." 



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